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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



A History of Ancient Education 

16mo, pp. 298, 20 portraits. $1.12 net 



A History of Modern Education 

Fourth Edition, with Revisions and Additions 
16mo, pp. 481, 55 portraits,, and 7 other illustrations. $1.50 



if) 



H 



HISTORY OF lEDMAL EDUCATION 



AN ACCOITNT OF THE 



COURSE OF EDUCATIONAL OPINION AND PRACTICE FROM 
THE SIXTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURIES, INCLUSIVE 



SAMUEL G. \VILLIAMS, Ph.D. 

Late Professor of ttie Science and Art of Teaching in Cornell University 




SYRACUSE, N. Y. 

C. W. BAEDEEN, PUBLISHEE 



Copyright, 1903, by Mrs. Florence W. Gushing 



• OONORESS, 

I Two GoP!«s Rtajsivist. 






2- fe» y^ 



• • • • • r» 



• •• ^ • 



PREFACE 

The publication of this volume completes the series 
of lectures on the history of education given by Prof. 
Williams at Cornell university, and the first appear- 
ance in English of histories of ancient and mediaeval 
education. Although is^ed after the author's death, 
the manuscript was so careful and matured and exact 
that it has been easy to present his record just as he 
wrote it. In so doing the publisher feels that he has 
made a distinct and needed addition to educational 
literature. 



(7) 



COISI TENTS 

CHAPTER I 



PAGES 



Mohammedan and Byzantine education. — Early 
Christian efforts for education— Brilliant character of 
Saracen school, especially in Spain — Cultivation of 
Greek learning in Constantinople and its barrenness. . 17-38 

CHAPTER II 

Christian education to the age of Charlemagne. — 
Humanitarian ideal of education from Christ — Early 
Christian schools— Rejection of Greek and Roman 
literature as heathen— Extinction of Roman schools— 
Text-books that were celebrated in the Middle Ages 
— Monastic and cathedral schools— Better education 
in the British Isles 39-61 

CHAPTER III 

The revival of learning in the ninth century. — 
Charlemagne and his efforts for education— Circular 
to the monasteries and its results — Care for the ver- 
nacular— Alcuin and his services— Rabanus Maurus . 
and Scotus Erigena— Alfred the Great and his efforts 
for better education in England 63-93 

CHAPTER IV 

The relapse of the tenth and eleventh centuries, 
AND the twelfth CENTURY RENAISSANCE. — Chiv- 
alry and its effects— Rise of municipalities and their 
demand for education— The Crusades and their ef- 
fects—Influence of the Saracenic schools in Spain 98-113 

(9) 



10 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION 

CHAPTER V 
The revival of learning in the twelfth century 

AND springing UP OF THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES. 

— Causes of the rise of the universities — Constitution 
of the early universities — The nations — Privileges 
and their origin — What constituted a university 113-133- 

CHAPTER VI 

Studies, methods, and discipline of the Medieval 
UNIVERSITIES. — Arts — Scieuces pursued — Length of 
courses and books used — Methods, dictation, disputa- 
tion, and lectures by bachelors — Inception and its 
costs — State of morals and discipline in universities — 
Influences exerted by universities — Changes in uni- 
versities wrought by printing 134-161 

CHAPTER VII 

Close of the mediaeval period in education. — State 
of education aside from the universities — German city 
schools — Brotherhood of the common life — The 
Bacchants — Barbarous discipline 163-175' 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGK 

Mediaeval System of Education Summarized 15 ' 

A Mcdiiiivul School 49 / 

A School of Mendicant Monks 91 "^ 

Initiation into the Order of Knighthood 101 

An Outer Monastic ScliooJ 127 ' 

Lcctu!'(! on Civil Law 138 ^'' 

Intcirior of a Norman School 147 "^ 



PORTRAITS 

I'A a K 

Abclard 81 

St. Ambrose 75 

Aristotle 69 

Ascham 1(55 

St. Augustine 75 

Bacon, Koger 81 

Bede 81 

St. Bernard 75 

Charlemagne 65' 

Colet 81 

Erasnuis •. 165 

St. Francis of Assisi 75 

St. Jerome 75 

Leonardo of Pisa 81 

Luther 165 

Melanchthon 165 

Pcitrarch 81 

Platter, Tliomas 165 

Socrates 81 

Sturm 165 

St. Thomas Aquinas 75 

(11) 



History of Mediaeval Education 



The cut on the opposite page is taken from Cubber- 

ley's excellent Syllabus of Lectures on the History of 

Education (Macmillan Company, 1902), which gives 

the following explanation : 

"An allegorical reresentation of the progress and degrees of 
education, from the 1508 [B^le] edition of the Margarita Philoso- 
pMca of Gregory de Reich, substantially the same as in the earlier 
editions. The youth, having mastered the Hornbook and the 
rudiments of learning, advances toward the temple of knowledge. 
Wisdom is about to place the key in the lock of the door of the 
temple. Across the door is written the word congruntur, — all 
agree. On the first and second floors of the temple he studies 
the Grammar of Donatus, and of Priscian, and at the first stage 
at the left on the third floor he studies the Logic of Aristotle, 
followed by the Rhetoric and Poetry of Tully, thus completing 
the Trimum. The Arithmetic of Boethius also appears on the 
third floor. On the fourth floor of the temple he completes the 
studies of the Quadrivium, taking in order the Music of Pytha- 
goras, Euclid's Geometry, and Ptolemy's Astronomy. The stu- 
dent now advances to the study of Philosophy, studying suc- 
cessively Physics, Seneca's Morals, and the Theology of Peter 
Lombard, the last being the goal toward which all has been 
directed." 



(14) 




MEDIEVAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION SUMMARIZED 



(15) 



I 



MEDIAEVAL EDUCATION 



CHAPTER I 



EAKLY christia:^", saracek, ai^td byzantike 

EDUCATION 

We have seen that during the imperial rule at 
Rome, there was no lack of attention by the better 
classes to what may be termed secondary, and superior 
education,*- that under favor of some of the wiser 
superiors, many large civil schools were scattered 
widely over the empire, not a few of which attained a 
reputation that has come down to us in at least a 
name; that in many cases aid was granted to these 
schools from the imperial treasury, and also, to cer- 
tain of the high teachers, valuable exemptions from 
taxes and military service; and that in these schools 
were taught grammar including literature, philosophy 
including dialectics, and in some of them, law and 
medicine. Such schools were especially numerous in 
Italy, Spain, and Roman Gaul. The teachers were 
either pagans or indifferent to religion; and on this 
account, the schools were less and less resorted to by 
the rapidly increasing Christians, who were besides at 
the outset most largely recruited from the poorer 
classes with- whom school attendance had probably not 
been common. "In the very heart of the schools," 

(17) 



18 THE DAKK AGES 

says Guizot speaking of the 4th century,* " there was 
an entire absence of liberty; the whole of the profes- 
sors were removable at any time. The emperor had 
full power, not only to transfer them from one town 
to another, but to cancel their appointment whenever 
he thought fit. Moreover, in a great many of the 
Gaulish towns, the people themselves were against 
them, for they were Christians, at least in a great 
majority of cases, and as such had a dislike for schools 
which were altogether pagan in origin and intention. 
The professors accordingly were regarded with hostil- 
ity and often maltreated; they were, in fact, quite 
unsupported except by the remnant of the higher 
classes, and by the imperial authority which still main- 
tained order." To this statement may be added that 
the higher classes, to whom the schools must look for 
support, sunk in luxury and effeminacy, had lost all 
taste for learning, and hence were little strenuous 
that their sons should be educated. It is not surpris- 
ing therefore, that in the 5th century the civil schools 
everywhere showed decay, that their efforts to attract 
students through knowledge made easy by abbrevia- 
tions and epitomes failed of success, and that in the 
6th century they died out totally, having grown out 
of touch with the spirit of the times both Christian 
and pagan. 

The ten^centuries which intervene from 500 to 1500 
A. D. are usually called the Middle Ages, and the first 
six of them may not inappropriately be called the 
Dark Ages in Western Europe, having been illumed 

* History of Civilization in France, Lecture 4tli, which should be read 
entire in this connection. 



GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY 19 

only by a transient and local gleam of light in the age 
of Charlemagne. The power of Eome died out, quite 
as much in consequence of the degeneracy of life and 
manners as of the inroads of the barbarians. While 
Eome retained her pristine virtues, such inroads had 
wrought only temporary injuries; but now in her de- 
generacy they brought wide-spread ruin, which yet 
held concealed within it the germs of a better civiliza- 
tion. The ages which succeeded the downfall of the 
Western Empire were marked by tumults and dis- 
orders, such as were incident to the breaking up of 
polities, and to the infusion, absorption, and general 
amelioration of barbarian elements, preparatory to the 
formation of new states. What seemed like final dis- 
solution was only incubation. For ages everything is 
in a state of perpetual flux; new hordes of barbarians 
hurl themselves upon the partially assimilated and 
domesticated earlier swarms; kingdoms rise like bub- 
bles, and like bubbles burst and disappear; violence 
prevails; laws are silent; industry languishes; and 
learning has no encouragement; yet during these 
times Christianity spreads rapidly, and is accepted by 
the barbarians with as great avidity as by more civil- 
ized races. This was the hopeful element in the situa- 
tion. 

It was wholly natural that men whose earthly con- 
dition was wretched and precarious should grasp 
eagerly at the hope of something better beyond the 
grave. It was equally natural, in the circumstances 
of the times, that the pure and simple doctrine of 
Christ and his apostles, should become clouded by 
superstitions, and disfigured by corruptions. Hence 



20 THE DARE AGES 

religion, on the one hand, grew into the form of an 
unlovely asceticism, which however had most important 
effects on learning and education; on the other and 
larger side, it assumed the shape of a great temporal 
authority. The church of Christy who had declared 
that his kingdom was not of this world, gradually he- 
came a hierarchy, and for ages was the sole power 
whose behests had somewhat general influence among 
men. This was doubtless a fact which, on the whole, 
had a beneficent effect on the condition of Europe dur- 
ing the ages of darkness and confusion. 

Such being the condition of the times, whether con- 
sidered from the religious or the politico-social point 
of view, there is little reason for surprise that they 
were characterized by dense ignorance, as well among 
the nobles as among the less-favored classes, and that 
this ignorance was but slightly mitigated even among 
the large majority of the clergy. The testimonies to 
the prevailing ignorance amongst all classes and at 
various epochs, are too abundant to leave any room for 
doubt. Contracts even for the sale of land were made 
verbally from the lack of notaries. Charters were 
signed with a cross because the highest personages did 
not know how to write. Charlemagne strove when 
emperor to learn to write; "but," says his friend 
Eginhard, " the work too late begun had little success, 
— parum prospere successit." Were it needful, it 
would be easy to multiply testimonies to the dense 
Ignorance that prevailed during several centuries. 

The causes of this ignorance are not far to seek. 
Besides the violence and uncertainty of the times which, 
it may readily be conceived, offered conditions highly 



CAUSES OF GENERAL IGNORANCE 21 

unfavorable to the spread or even the preservation of 
learning; and besides the correlated lack of ready and 
safe intercourse of communities with each other, 
whereby knowledge might pass *from hand to hand, 
there were other very obvious causes for the prevalence 
of ignorance. 

1. First of all may be remarked the general worth- 
lessness of what stood in the place of literature. The 
dislike of the early Christians for their pagan oppres- 
sors had presently extended itself to their literature, 
which was distrusted besides on account of both its 
origin and the mythology that it embodied. Hence in 
the early centuries they deliberately cut loose from 
the culture of the past, and, to avoid the dangers that 
they feared, they separated themselves from the stores 
of knowledge gained by the experience of the ancient 
world. Henceforth the few who could read were 
limited mostly in their choice to monkish homilies and 
to the theological polemics which sprung abundantly 
from the frequent religious controversies of those times. 
This, as may be supposed, was a kind of literature 
neither very fruitful in point of culture, nor very 
likely to entice men to overcome the difficulties of 
learning to read for the sake of perusing it. 

2. Aside from the Bible, not only was the available 
reading matter mostly worthless, but whatever books 
there were, were very scarce and very dear, very much 
rarer and dearer than they were in Eome under the 
empire, when they were copied by skilful slaves and 
sold at moderate prices. During the Middle Ages, 
not only was the cost of transcription enhanced, but 
the material on which books were written, papyrus and 



22 THE DARK AGES 

parchment, had become very costly and difficult to ob- 
tain. From both these causes, books could be pro- 
cured only at immense prices, a very weighty cause of 
the prevailing ignorance. 

3. Add to this that even these costly books were 
written in Latin, the only tongue then in common use 
for literary purposes; that, of the numerous brood of 
dialects that were springing up, none had become suffi- 
ciently developed or sufficiently predominant to war- 
rant its use in books until the latter part of the Mid- 
dle Ages; and that hence, even when books could be 
obtained, they were utterly unintelligible to the vast 
majority of the people, — and we shall find little rea- 
son to wonder at what might otherwise seem to us the 
almost incredible ignorance of all classes during 
several centuries. 

4. Another consideration that seems worth naming 
in this connection, is that for a long period, the very 
idea of the need of any education seems to have been 
totally lacking. The peoples of a cultured origin had 
forgotten the tradition of any book knowledge; whilst 
many more, sprung from barbarian stock, had never 
had any such tradition. The clergy set little value on 
it, the warlike nobles despised it, the masses knew 
nothing of it. 

5. As if these causes which tended to make ignor- 
ance unavoidable were not enough, an additional one 
came into prominence in the 9th century, in the 
spread of the feudal system. From its own nature, 
in combination with the manners and spirit of the 
times, it added isolation to the other causes which in- 
tensified ignorance. The feudal families lived shut up 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 23 

in their strongholds, around which clustered villages 
of their dependents, ministers to their wants, and vic- 
tims of their caprice. From their castles, the barons 
often issued for purposes of violence and rapine, mak- 
ing all travel especially perilous ; whilst their depend- 
ents were shut off from intercourse with similar com- 
munities by barriers of the most rancorous hostility. 

When these several obstacles to learning are consid- 
ered together, they will materially aid us, as well to 
form some conception of the condition of things dur- 
ing that portion of the Mediaeval period which is called 
the Dark Ages, as to understand some of the chief 
influences which either caused or intensified the bar- 
barous ignorance by which they were characterized. 
The means of culture found their chief resource in 
monasteries. Macaulay says : " Had not such retreats 
been scattered here and there among the huts of the 
miserable peasntry and the castles of the ferocious aris- 
tocracy, European society would have consisted of 
beasts of burden and beasts of prey. The church has 
many times been compared by divines to the ark of 
which we read in the book of Genesis, but never has 
the resemblance been more perfect than during the evil 
time when she alone rode, amidst darkness and tem- 
pest, on the deluge beneath which all the great works 
of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed, bearing 
within her that feeble germ from which a second and 
more glorious civilization was to spring." 

Through these ages, however, dark as they may 
appear to be, may be seen flowing three distinct cur- 
rents of educational effort, which for centuries were 
wholly independent of each other, but which ulti- 



24 CUREEIyrTS OF EDUCATIOI^AL ACTIVITY 

mately assumed most important and interesting rela- 
tions, to the great benefit of learning. These were 1st 
the Saracenic current which, beginning in the East in 
the 7th century, extended in the 8th to Spain, where 
it attained its greatest volume in the 9th, 10th and 
11th centuries, and even exerted a reviving influence 
on the barrenness of Western Europe ; 2d that of the 
Byzantines in Eastern Europe by which the old Greek 
learning and literature were preserved to bear new 
fruit among the western nations; and 3d that of 
Western Europe which, though at first very obscure as 
learning, finally drew into itself reanimating streams 
from both the other currents, wholly absorbed the By- 
zantine current in the 15th century, and has since 
been flowing on with ever-increasing volume and force. 
These currents of educational activity with their rela- 
tions to each other and their fluctuations in the several 
centuries, admit of a graphic representation as in the 
accompanying diagram, in which (1) represents the 
course of Saracenic education, (2) that of the Eastern 
Empire, and (3) that of Western Europe. An at- 
tempt has also been made in (3) to indicate approxi- 
mately the main direction of educational progress by 
expansions above and below the central line. 

We will first describe the Saracenic and Byzantine 
efforts at intellectual progress, both because of their 
greater brilliancy during much of the Middle Ages, 
and because they throw light on the later culture of 
Western Europe. 

Of the culture of the Saracens, it may be truthfully 
said that it was most brilliant in the ages when West- 
ern Europe was in Cimmerian literary darkness. In 



a 
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26 THE SAEACEKS 

the enthusiastic words of Karl Schmidt,* "In the 
time when, together with the fall of the Western 
Empire, its culture also was falling into uninterrupted 
decay ; when barbarian inroads were sweeping over the 
West bearing with them confusion and destruction; 
when Christian priests were preparing proscription 
lists of heretics, and waging a destructive warfare 
against classic literature, so that it was forced to take 
refuge in the cloisters in which the ancient manu- 
scripts were mechanically copied ; — in this night of the 
spirit, the arts and sciences, nourished by Islam, 
shone out like a beam of light which should rekindle 
the human spirit also in the West. Erom Moham- 
medan Spain Europe received its impulse towards and 
its first acquaintance with the sciences of nature, 
especially with Optics and Astronomy, as also with 
Architecture. The Mohammedan Theology became 
the model of Christian Scholasticism." 

Elementary education began soon after the death of 
Mohammed, if not before, — an education in reading 
and the Koran, and this has been continued to the 
present time in schools attached to the mosques. To 
these soon succeeded higher schools for the wealthier 
classes, and colleges for those who craved a thorough 
training, under teachers of logic, philosophy, theology, 
and medicine. The arts and sciences spread rapidly 
amongst the Mohammedan nations, and were encour- 
aged by the caliphs. The treasures of Grecian science, 
and the philosophy of Aristotle, translated from Syrian 
versions, were ransacked to add to their resources. 
Thus they became skilled in the logic and philosophy 

*Geschiclite der Padagogik, Vol. 2d, p. 102. 



EEMAEKABLE PROGKESS 27 

of Aristotle. They cultivated Astronomy with success, 
erected many observatories, made tolerable astronomic 
measurments, amongst these determining the earth's 
circumference at about 24,000 miles; but they adhered 
to Ptolemy's theory of the solar system, and debased 
the science by mingling with it Astrology. For Medi- 
cine they showed special aptitude, and in this during 
the Middle Ages they were everywhere acknowledged 
as authorities. They had translations of Galen and 
Hippocrates, to which some of their writers added 
much of value, and the medical school of Salernum 
doubtless owes its origin to one of their pupils, Con- 
stantino of Carthage. The science of chemistry they 
originated — some of its names are theirs — though they 
also perverted it to a vain search after a means of 
transmuting base metals into gold; the invention of 
gunpowder in the 13th century is also with much 
probability ascribed to them. They had translations 
of the Greek mathematics, Euclid, and the algebra 
of Diophantus. Algebra was greatly advanced in 
their hands by Mohammed-ibn-Mousa who carried 
equations through the second degree;* and Europe re- 
ceived from them its knowledge of the decimal nota- 
tion stamped with their name. The literature and 
language of Greece however they seem to have dis- 
dained, gaining their knowledge of its science solely 
through translations by Christians and Jews, to both 
of whom they extended a degree of toleration and 
even favor elsewhere unknown during those times. 

Much of this surprising scientific progress had been 
made within two centuries succeeding the death of 

* Histoire Generale du IV Siecle etc., Vol. 1, pp. 785-6. 



28 THE SAKACEKS 

Mohammed. The celebrated caliph, Haroun al Eas- 
chid, the contemporary of Charlemagne, did much to 
encourage education, by founding schools and libraries, 
by causing translations of Greek works, and by send- 
ing large numbers of learned men to make scientific 
journeys. Other caliphs founded academies like those 
of Bagdad, Bokhara, and Damascus, provided them 
each with a library, and paid the salaries of their 
teachers. 

But great as is the interest attaching to the intel- 
lectual activity of the Saracens in the East, it is to the 
Arabs in Spain that Europe became chiefly indebted. 
In the last half of the 8th century, as the result of 
a fierce struggle between two royal families, Abdar- 
rahman of the line of the Ommeyades, escaping from 
the massacre of the residue of his family save one, fled 
westward through Africa, made a lodgment in Spain, 
which had already yielded to the Moslem arms, and 
established there a flourishing Saracenic empire. The 
kindly alliance then formed with the Jews, by whom 
the Moslems had been materially aided in their con- 
quest, endured according to Gibbon until both were 
driven out of Spain seven hundred years later, and 
was in marked contrast with the inhuman treatment 
which this unhappy people suflered elsewhere in Eu- 
rope. Whilst in other parts of Europe confusion and 
lawlessness reigned, in Moslem Spain peace and order 
prevailed; the arts and agriculture flourished; indus- 
try was secure of its fruits; and education was so uni- 
versally diffused that it is said it was difficult to find 
in Andalusia a person who could not read and write. 
Famous universities arose,, like those of Cordova, Se- 



THE TEKTH CENTURY 29 

ville, Toledo, and Salamanca, to which a few studious 
youth from Italy and Gaul, like Gerbert and Arezzo 
resorted, undeterred by the tales of necromancy which 
ignorant Europe told of the sciences that the Moslems 
there pursued.* 

A rich poetic, romantic, and philosophic literature 
so greatly flourished that the learned Oriental scholar 
Deutsch asserts that in the library of one of the later 
caliphs there were over 400,000 books, mostly by Span- 
ish authors; and this statement is confirmed by a very 
recent author in the Histoire Generale, Vol. 1. Karl 
Schmidt gives the number as 600,000, but the smaller 
number is sufficiently incredible, and aflords a suffi- 
ciently vivid contrast to the literary poverty of Chris- 
tian Europe in those ages. Deutsch states that the 
prototypes of many European legends, like those of 
the Cid and Arthur of the Round Table, as also the 
metres of poems of Dante and Petrarch, are traceable 
to the Arabic poetry of Spain and Sicily. 

The highest point of Mohammedan culture in Spain 
appears to have been reached during the 10th century. 
Up to this time there had been an equal toleration of 
all religious beliefs; but in the succeeding ages there 
occurred an outburst of religious fanaticism, the result 
of wars with Christian Spain and of change of dynas- 
ties, by reason of which literature and learning declined 
to some extent; yet when driven from Spain, the Moors 
as they were called were still evidently far more en- 
lightened than their bigoted enemies. 

Besides the remarkable intellectual activity dis- 
played by the Saracens in the cultivation of science 

* Schmidt-Geschichte der PSdagogik, Vol. 2, pp. 111-113. 



30 THE SAKACEi^S 

and literature, and in fostering schools, academies, 
libraries, and universities, they produced on the shores 
of the Caspian, about 1060 A. D., a Moslem Solomon 
in the person of the royal author of the Book of 
Oabus; and in Spain in 1190, an educational prototype 
of Eousseau in Ibn Tophaih* 

The Book of Oabus was written by a father for his 
son and heir, giving him wise counsels for the sciences 
he should master; for the virtues which he should 
make habitual in his practice, and the prudence that 
belongs with virtue ; for the bodily exercises in which 
he should be skilled, and the moderation that he 
should observe in these as in all other parts of life; 
for the interest that he should manifest in all the 
vocations pursued by his people, since a prince should 
have knowledge of all that concerns his subjects; and 
for the manner in which he shall hereafter train up 
his sons and daughters. A brief passage on the treat- 
ment of children, which is curious in itself, may serve 
as a specimen of the style of this treatise. " Should 
the teacher beat thy son, show no over-drawn sympa- 
thy with him; let him be beaten; for children learn 
sciences, arts and good manners only under the rod; 
— that is they learn only from fear of blows and of 
the teacher's chidings, but from nature or of their 
own impulse learn they nothing." The divergence of 
this advice from that of the Greek and Eoman theo- 
rists is not more obvious than its coincidence with the 
ideas of Solomon in regard to the treatment of chil- 
dren. Great emphasis is laid on the knowledge of 
the one only God in so far as he may be known 

* Schmidt Gesch. der Padagogik. Vol. 2, pp. 114-124. 



lEX TOPHAIL 31 

tlirough tlie study of man who is his image, and of 
the world which " He created not wantonly but that 
He might show forth His justice and excellence, and 
which He adorned because He knew well that beauty 
is better than ugliness and riches better than poverty." 
Hence in the opinion of this author " religion is the 
loftiest and most excellent of all sciences. It is a tree 
whose roots are the belief in the only God, and whose 
branches are the law. " " Therefore, ' ' he says, ' ' apply 
thyself diligently, my son, to the knowledge of relig- 
ion, for it is the pith of the tree of which the rest of 
the sciences are only the twigs." 

The fundamental idea of Ibn Tophail is that a 

human being without any intercourse with his fellow 

men, and so without the inculcation of any positive 

religious or other ideas through education, could, by 

dint of the ordinary experiences which nature thrusts 

upon him and by natural inferences from these, attain 

to a true knowledge of nature and of God. Hence he 

imagines an illegitimate son, born of a king's daughter 

and committed to the waves immediately after birth in 

a little ark. He is driven tipon an uninhabited island 

where he is nursed by a doe. Living here amongst 

beasts and birds, he learns to subordinate himself to 

nature's laws, and to fashion for himself clothing after 

the example of his brute associates. From observation 

of the special, he attains to general ideas. From the 

organization of living beings and from their unseen 

life-energies, he conceives the idea of an invisible 

Power who originates life; and from the unity and 

order of the universe, he convinces himself that this 

unseen Power is one and is intelligent. Furthermore, 



82 THE SAKACEKS 

by reflecting on his own spiritual operations, he arrives 
at the idea that as this thought-power in himself, 
which while using the experiences of the senses still 
transcends them, is incorporeal, therefore G-od must 
be a spirit. Such is a very condensed sketch of the 
work of Ibn Tophail, which like Rousseau's is couched 
in the form of a romance. When we come to study 
Rousseau's Emile, it will not be difl&cult to see that, 
whilst some of the ideas of this moslem work are curi- 
ously analogous to those of Emile, the divergences are 
greater than the resemblances. The idea in both of 
isolating the pupil from his fellows, and subjecting him 
wholly to the influences of nature that he may be objec- 
tively taught by the experiences of nature, is well-nigh 
the sole point of contact and is especially striking; but 
with this, both resemblance and analogy end. The ideas 
of the two men as to the course which intellectual, 
moral, and religious development takes in the human 
being under the influences of experience, have little 
resemblance. Fanciful, however, as the educational 
scheme of the Moorish author may appear to be, it is 
hardly more fanciful or impracticable than that of the 
erratic Frenchman, save that the latter substitutes a 
paragon of a tutor as a companion for the child, in 
place of the beasts and birds of Ibn Tophail. 



Literary Actiyity of the Byzantines 

The mediseval Byzantine learning was the lineal suc- 
cessor of that of the ancient Greeks. After the ex- 
tinction of paganism, and the closing of the '' schools 
of Athens" early in the 6th century, the old Greek 
studies were mostly restricted to some of the monas- 
teries and to the Eoyal College of Constantinople. 
But during the dynastic and religious disorders of the 
7th and 8th centuries, the college was destroyed, its 
library of many thousand volumes was burned, and 
learning found its sole refuge in the monasteries on 
Mt. Athos, and in a few of those on the islands of the 
Archipelago. The 9th century however witnessed a 
great revival of interest in learning. The Caesar, 
Bardos, uncle of the emperor, became its patron, and 
founded in the capitol " a free university, independent 
of church and clergy in which distinguished teachers 
of philosophy, geometry, astronomy, and high gram- 
mar, gave lectures which he himself attended." The 
salaries of the teachers were paid by the state ; Leo, 
archbishop of Thessalonica, a man famous for his 
knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy, 
was placed at its head ; and Photius, reputed the most 
learned man of the age, was summoned to the capitol 
as patriarch. A library of the ancient works of Greek 
literature was carefully collected ; and, on account of 
the intellectual indolence that prevailed, its contents 

(33) 



34 THE BYZAKTIKES 

were imparted in extracts, abridgments, and epitomes. 
From this time forth until Constantinople was taken 
by the Turks in 1453, amidst all the revolutions and 
changes of dynasties, a certain type of learning, in- 
ferior indeed in essential character, had its continuous 
centre in Constantinople. It was promoted by succes- 
sive emperors, and its resources were enlarged by ad- 
ditions of books, so that in the 12th century, Constan- 
tinople had a rich collection of the ancient Greek lit- 
erature, in which are named some works, like the 
comedies of Menander, whose loss is deplored by 
scholars. Some of the old monasteries also had val- 
uable libraries, and these in much later ages became 
famous as places where valuable manuscripts have 
been found after centuries of oblivion. The lan- 
guage of the court and church had something of 
Attic purity; literary works in the ancient tongue 
were undertaken by Anna Comnena, daughter of the 
emperor Alexius, of whom and of the manners of the 
court, and the Greek pride of race, Sir Walter Scott 
gives a graphic picture in " Count Eobert of Paris "; 
and a persistent effort was made to re-establish the 
reign of the ancient Greek science, literature, and 
philosophy, under Christian auspices. 

But the Byzantines showed themselves incapable of 
making any original and independent use of all their 
learned resources. The stamp of intellectual barren- 
ness is impressed on all that they did. They could 
collect, edit, comment, and copy manuscript; could 
make epitomes ; could compile lexicons and manuals of 
rules; but their attempts at poetic and historic com- 



INTELLECTUAL STAGI^ATIOIT 35 

position are valueless, and their efforts at philosophy 
are a mere ^* scholastic summary of Aristotle ". 

Gibbon* attributes their literary and scientific 
sterility to the bewilderment of their understandings 
by metaphysical controversies, to which they were 
fatally prone; to the vitiation of their taste by monk- 
ish homilies, which seems to me a more doubtful 
cause; to a loss of all reliable principles of moral 
evidence through a belief in present miracles and 
visions ; and to the total lack of emulous rivalry with 
other polished nations. '* Alone in the universe," he 
says, '' the self-satisfied pride of the Greeks was not 
disturbed by the comparison of foreign merit; and it 
is no wonder if they fainted in the race, since they 
had neither competitors to urge their speed, nor judge 
to crown their victory." 

With regard to the first reason that Gibbon assigns, 
Hallam says if "The Greeks abused their ingenuity 
in theological controversies, those especially which re- 
lated to the nature and incarnation of our Savior, 
wherein, as is usual, the disputants became more posi- 
tive and rancorous as their creed receded from the 
possibility of human apprehension." 

It is possible that some one or all of these circum- 
stances may have been influential in producing the 
undoubted intellectual stagnation of the Byzantines, 
their poverty of spirit amid great literary riches. 
But it is well that we should bear in mind that for 
abundantly more than ten centuries before the age 
that we are considering, this same poverty of spirit 

* History of Decline and Fall of Roman Empire, C. 53. 
t Middle Ages, C. VI. 



36 THE BYZANTIN^ES 

had characterized the degenerate descendants of Socra- 
tes and Aristotle, of Homer, Sophocles, and Demos- 
thenes; and this too when their intellects were not yet 
bewildered with empty controversies, at least about 
ecclesiastical subjects, nor their judgments clouded 
by superstitious beliefs, nor their taste vitiated by 
barbarous homilies; and when a generous emulation 
with other polished nations was still vividly open to 
them in Eome and Alexandria, had their national self 
conceit been ready to accept it. 

Hence we must, I think, look for some deeper cause 
of the fact that we are considering; and it is quite 
possible that this may be found in the lack, by both 
the Byzantine Greeks and their predecessors for a long 
series of generations, of any high ideal of human 
life and human destiny, like that which the founder 
of Christianity presented, but which the nations were 
not yet prepared to receive, because even a Divine 
revelation requires ages for the experience of mankind 
to grow up to its apprehension. 

The Byzantine people had far greater treasures from 
antiquity than we have received from them, but they 
seemed incapable of advancing by their use; and, as 
Schlegel truly says, in his History of Literature 
(Lecture 7), " The matter of chief importance in all 
civilization, and in all literature, is not the dead treas- 
ures we possess, but the living uses to which we apply 
them." He further says that amongst the country- 
men of Aristotle, " such was the neglect of his writ- 
ings, which we consider as amongst the most precious 
monuments of the Grecian intellect, that there re- 
mained at one time but a single copy, and that too 



A SARCOPHAGUS OF LITERARY TREASURES 37 

rescued from destruction by an accident of the most 
extraordinary nature." 

It would really seem that the ancient poets and 
orators, historians and philosophers, artists and scien- 
tists, had exhausted the entire cycle of possibilities 
of the Grecian intellect, on the plane on which it per- 
sisted in standing; and had bequeathed to their succes- 
sors a " barren sceptre ", entailing an inglorious show 
of empty sovereignty, until it should be transferred 
to the realm of some new and loftier ideal. Incapa- 
ble of this transfer, or too indolent to attempt it, 
there was left to the Byzantines only the humble yet 
eventually useful office of collecting scattered and 
rare books and thus rescuing from destruction the 
precious fragments of ancient science and literature ; 
of attempting to uphold the ancient world unchanged 
and unenlarged against new peoples and a new spirit; 
of becoming thereby, during many ages of disorder 
and barbarism, the sole refuge of the ancient culture ; 
of preserving this always in its ancient form and 
practically unaltered, as it would inevitably not have 
been with a race of vigorous originality; and of thus 
saving the youthful western peoples, whom they de- 
spised as barbarians, many weary and devious wander- 
ings to attain a like culture, by presenting to them 
ultimately the unchanged antique types of which they 
had before been ignorant. This was indeed a humble 
office, analogous to that of a sarcophagus in which are 
entombed dead treasures, yet it performed a service 
to the future of learning not less great or noteworthy 
because wholly unintended. How important was this 



38 THE BYZAKTIISES 

work of the Byzntine Greeks, and how great their un- 
conscious service to future generations, we shall see 
more clearly when we come to study the educational 
history of the 15th and 16th centuries. 



CHAPTEK II 

OHEISTIAK EDUCATION TO THE AGE OF CHAELEMAGNE 

We have seen that amid the gloom and confusion of 
the Middle Ages there are discernible three currents 
of intellectual and educational effort; and that these 
currents, while parallel in time, were for many ages 
wholly distinct in space, having no reciprocal influence, 
separated not more by location than by ruling ideas 
and purposes. All were monotheistic, believing in the 
same God whom the Hebrews adored; all opposed the 
prevailing heathenism; two believed in the same Son 
of God who had come to save the world ; — but aside 
from these facts they had little or nothing in common. 

The followers of Mohammed were filled with a fiery 
zeal which made them missionaries not less than war- 
riors, intent not merely on conquering but on convert- 
ing the nations with whom they came in contact. 
This fanatical enthusiasm, which combined earthly 
dominion with the spread of their faith, was for sev- 
eral ages correlated with an intellectual activity which, 
as we have seen, made their career the most brilliant 
and noteworthy fact of any -which marked the world 
of that period. To confirm the faith which they ex- 
tended by their conquering arms, and to perpetuate 
the results of their intellectual activity, they early saw 
the need of a corresponding education, and made the 
brilliant educational efforts which we have witnessed. 

(39) 



40 CHEISTIAN EDUCATION" BEFORE CHARLEMAGl^E 

We have seen that the Byzantine education was 
doubtless a continuation of the ancient Greek culture, 
greatly attenuated indeed after the schools of Athens 
were closed by Justinian and during the religious con- 
tentions of the succeeding ages, but rising again into 
prominence from the 9th century. Here then for 
about six centuries the old Greek learning and litera- 
ture, with the dogmas of the Eastern Church, were 
industriously taught; but with an utter lack of orig- 
inality for which later ages have reason to be grateful, 
since thereby the finest products of the old Greek in- 
tellect have in large measure reached us unchanged. 

We come now to the examination of the third of 
these currents of intellectual life, long inconspicuous 
while the others were brilliant, yet into which these 
finally converge, and from which they gain their sig- 
nificance in educational history. And here it becomes 
essential that we should first observe the nature of the 
ideal which forms the basis of Christian education, — 
an ideal, towards which through ages of darkness and 
mistaken effort, it has slowly, deviously, and through 
many unavoidable errors, been gradually approximat- 
ing. 

In the ancient world, as we have seen, man was 
valued as a means for magnifying and exalting the 
state to which he belonged, and chiefly in so far as he 
was useful for that purpose. With the coming of 
Christ, however, with the example of his divine man- 
hood, and with his teachings, a new idea was intro- 
duced into the world, which was destined to produce 
far-reaching consequences on both civilization and edu- 
cation. It was the idea of the infinite worth of the 



A KEW IDEAL 41 

human being as such, since he is destined to an im- 
mortality of duration, since God is immanent in him, 
and since his loftiest work is to become perfect, as his 
Father in heaven is perfect. 

In its truest expression, therefore, Christianity views 
all men as equal in valuation before God, and their 
destiny as of equal moment to Him. Before him 
mere human rank and station are nothing. The like 
destination of all men as His children demands there- 
fore equal rights, equal duties, and, as far as possible, 
equal opportunities for education, for all men, and 
gives to all mankind a claim on the proper brotherly 
offices of their fellows. 

It is a confused recognition of this fundamental 
truth in our own times, a truth which in early ages 
the ancient Hebrews alone saw, and yet saw not clearly, 
which inspires the various humanitarian movements 
and the newly awakened consciousness of the mutual 
duties of capital and labor, the duties of the rich to 
the very poor, and of the learned to the ignorant, with 
which our age is rife. This idea, opposed by material- 
ism and selfishness, and so obscured by them that 
Christianity has often seemed little better than mere 
worldliness, has been slowly leavening the world and 
its educational agencies, and in these latter days is 
moving more swiftly towards its realization. 

Christ himself, in honoring marriage by his cooper- 
ation, in the love that he manifests for children, in the 
emphasis that he lays on character as of more worth 
than riches or worldly success, and in showing that the 
chief aim of man's existence is the elevation of him- 
self out of the earthly into the spiritual through 



42 christia:n" educatiok before charlemagke 

righteousness and truth, — as well as by his models of 
how teaching should be done and the spirit in which it 
must be done to attain the highest success, has both 
laid the foundations of modern pedagogy and revealed 
to us its ideal. 

This ideal, may be thus briefly expressed. Its aim 
is universal and purely humanitarian. It has no sec- 
tional limits, no merely utilitarian implications. *' It 
is to minister to the welfare of society and the state 
by caring for the welfare of the individual man; to 
push the divine and human in man's nature to its full- 
est possible development, that he may become intel- 
lectually and morally jree and so like his Maker ; and 
to use thereto all science and art, the world and life, 
as means of culture, by mastering which man may also 
become a benevolent and creative intelligence in his 
limited sphere, as God is in his infinite one." 

This idea which makes the individual and not the 
state the chief centre of interest, and which aims to 
prepare man for eternal happiness hereafter by bring- 
ing into vigorous activity during his earthly career all 
that is best in him, as thinker and worker, and as 
sharer in all the multiform relations of social life, — 
was so unlike anything in the ancient world, that it is 
not surprising that it required ages of blind groping 
before its fulness of meaning because apparent to 
mankind. Here as elsewhere, even a divine revelation 
has needed the interpretation of a long-continued 
human experience to make its meaning clear. 

The earliest Christians seem indeed, at least in some 
recorded cases, to have maintained with each other 
fraternal relations, having all things in common, and 



MONASTEKIES 43 

the rich ministering of their abundance to their poorer 
brethren. The sphere of woman was in the family, 
but there she was the co-equal of man, the chief 
teacher of the young, and their guide in the forma- 
tion of character. Children were looked upon as a 
precious gift of God, who were to be trained for His 
service and for that of their fellow men. The earli- 
est Christian education was therefore domestic in 
character, and in this the child was trained to a keen 
sense of duty through the inculcation of Christian 
ideas by precepts and more effectually by the example 
of parents and friends. 

So far then the early practice conformed fairly 
though unconsciously to its ideal. But this uncon- 
scious conformity did not long contnue. With many, 
the dominion of old ideas was too strong to be at once 
overcome ; while with the more zealous and spiritual- 
minded, exclusive contemplation of the future life 
presently led to a neglect of this world and its duties, 
that by ascetic observances they might prepare them- 
selves for the unseen world. Hence in the East pious 
men became at first hermits, and later were led by the 
strong social instinct to form societies for an exclu- 
sively religious life. This practice soon spread to the 
"West, and in both East and West monasteries arose. 
This fact was fraught with the most important con- 
sequences to the future of learning, for which, during 
the ages of violence and disorder, the monasteries be- 
came the only safe retreat. 

The old Koman utilitarian spirit also did not disap- 
pear with the subversion of the empire. It survived 
in a new form, and as the Christian church gathered 



44 CHEISTIAN" EDUCATIOK BEFOEE CHAELEMAGI^E 

strength by its accessions this spirit reappeared in its 
dogmas, its methods, and the purposes for which it 
used literature.* Amidst the violence and the con- 
flicts which were rife, the church was forced to rely 
on its dominion over the minds and consciences of 
men. Hence it was not strange that it should foster 
even superstitions that aided it in this purpose, and 
that it should in all ways claim, and exercise so far as 
practicable, a limitless control over thoughts, thus 
suppressing freedom of thinking, self-centred individ- 
uality, and self-judging responsibility. 

With the introduction into the world's history of 
this new humanitarian idea, an idea which cares best 
for society and the state, for this present world and 
for the unseen world, by caring primarily for the 
complete development of the individual, mankind has 
completed its cycle of experience of the ideas that can 
influence education, and has reached the last and 
highest, which it is now its duty to strive fully to 
realize. 

Let us now trace the history of its progress among 
the nations of Western Europe; let us note the ex- 
pedients that were adopted during ages of change 
and confusion to keep alive some feeble sparks of 
learning, at least among the clergy, and the vicissi- 
tudes to which these efforts were subjected; let us 
also, while noticing the deviations of education from 
its high ideal under the pressure of invincible neces- 
sity, observe besides how an influence from Saracenic 
culture came to co-operate with other influences aris- 
ing from the circumstances of the times in giving 

*Guizot. Civilization in France, Lecture 16th, p. 102. 



THE CATECHUMEKATE 45 

origin, impulse, and direction to the'^early universities; 
and how, a few centuries later, when the universities 
were struggling under the yoke of a narrow and nar- 
rowing dialectic, a fresh impulse springing from the 
effete East, which, while itself preserving a form with- 
out spirit, had yet been the conservator of the old 
Greek culture, came to infuse a new spirit into the 
vigorous but now lethargic West and to turn it ulti- 
mately to the pursuit of its long-misunderstood and 
neglected ideal. 

The first Christian efforts for education, apart from 
the domestic training which has already been alluded to, 
was the establishment of the Catechumenate, the ob- 
ject of which was to teach adult proselytes before 
baptism to read the Bible and to understand and ac- 
cept the fundamental Christian doctrines. These 
schools were taught by the pastors, and were divided, 
it is said, into first two and later four stages of ad- 
vancement. Their purposes were limited to impart- 
ing a knowledge of distinctively Christian truths, the 
purely literary education of the few who desired it 
being still gained from the heathen civil schools. The 
special training of those who desired to become Chris- 
tian teachers was gained by intimacy with the pastors 
and by imitation of their example, the civil schools 
being here also relied upon at first for imparting the 
knowledge that was needful for their sacred vocation. 

The first attempt to connect religious with literary 
and scientific teaching was made by Pantanus in Alex- 
andria, 181 A. D., in a school which from its procedure 
by question and answer was called the Catechetic 
school. It was founded as a school for the systematic 



46 CHEISTIA.1!^ EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE 

interpretation of Scripture, together with instruction 
in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and geometry. 
Presumably it was intended to make attendance at 
heathen schools unnecessary. 

Pantanus was succeeded in this school by Clemens 
of Alexandria, who believed that the heathen philoso- 
phers were, like Moses, in some degree divinely in- 
spired, and that philosophy, like the Mosaic writings, 
was a preparation for the more complete revelation 
which was made by Christ and which is the fulfilment 
of philosophy as well as of the law. Hence he taught 
his pupils what was good in philosophy as well as in 
the Scriptures, and aimed thus gradually to lead them 
up to Christianity, — a procedure which seems to have 
been judicious with those who, while well-disposed 
towards the new faith, still had a hereditary respect 
for the works of the great heathen sages. 

Clemens was succeeded by the wise and learned 
Origen, under whom this school attained its greatest 
and most brilliant reputation. Origen connected the 
study of nature with dialectics, so as to lead his dis- 
ciples from nature up to God, a noteworthy effort in 
that age. He also taught geometry and astronomy as 
a preparative to ethics. Then followed the reading 
and interpretation of the poets and philosophers, in 
which he encouraged his pupils to full freedom of 
investigation, whilst he accompanied their efforts with 
sympathy and guidance. Finally he brought them 
with this full preparation to the knowledge and inter- 
pretation of scripture, and in this he made use of the 
idea of an allegoric or mystic meaning in the explan- 
ation of passages which seemed to him to convey 



PANTANUS, CLEMEKS, OKIGEK 47 

notions unworthy of the Deity — a mode of interpre- 
tation which prevailed largely in the Middle Ages. 

This account, summarized from Karl Schmidt, will 
give an idea of the subjects and methods of this school 
during the time of its greatest prosperity in the 3d 
century. Origen was succeeded by other teachers of 
some repute, but the school sank into insignificance 
after the middle of the 4th century. 

Thus far we see no openly expressed opposition to 
heathen science and literature nor to the sending of 
Christian youth to heathen schools. But in the 3d 
century a note of opposition to the civil schools began 
to be heard, beginning with Tertullian and expressing 
itself prominently in the Apostolic Constitutions, 
about 300 A. D., and later in the writings of Chrys- 
ostom. 

The Constitutions say: '' Eefrain from all the writ- 
ings of the heathen; for what hast thou to do with 
strange discourses, laws, or false prophets, which in 
truth turn aside from the faith those who are weak in 
understanding." And then, directing attention to 
the Scriptures as containing what the faithful may 
need of poetry and prophecy, they conclude : " Where- 
fore abstain scrupulously from all strange and devilish 
books."* 

While the teachings of Chrysostom contain much 
good sense, as for example the declaration that women 
are the best teachers for children, they still insist that 
the cloister is the best and safest place for Christian 
education, because youth are there isolated from the 
corruptions of the world, and gain an inexpugnable 

* Mullinger. Schools of Charles the Great, p. 8. 



48 CHBISTIAK EDUCATIOK BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE 

habit of virtue. Chrysostom therefore dissuades from 
attendance at heathen schools, where he says " boys 
learn vices rather than sciences, and in grasping after 
lesser goods lose the greatest. >K * ^ If the soul 
is virtuous the ignorance of science will not hurt it, 
but if it is corrupted it suffers harm in spite of the 
most eloquent tongue." 

The veto of the Fathers on the civil schools has its 
justification in the fact that during the last four cen- 
turies of their existence they paid almost exclusive 
attention to the mere ornaments of heathen culture. 

During the 3d and 4th centuries a vigorous opposi- 
tion began to be manifested, not only to the heathen 
schools, but also to all heathen literature, the best 
and indeed the only literature then accessible, save 
the Scriptures, that was worthy to be called litera- 
ture. Early in the 3d century this opposition was led 
by the fiery and uncompromising Tertullian, who was 
followed by his disciple, Cyprian, the learned and 
pious bishop of Carthage, and he by St. Jerome and 
St. Augustine, all counted among the fathers of the 
Christian church. 

Nor, when we consider the circumstances and the 
times, does this opposition seem to have been prompted 
by an unwarrantable prejudice. For the world was 
but slowly emerging from the shades of heathenism, 
and all the surroundings still bore the heathen stamp; 
yet the literature that the church fathers proscribed 
presents the heathen ideas and mythology in their 
most alluring guise. It was not unreasonable there- 
fore to fear the influence of such literature on impres- 
sible youth, who must besides be brought into daily 




A MEDIEVAL SCHOOL. (From Cubberley's Syllabus, after a title 
page of Anwykyll's Compendium Graramaticae) 



(49) 



OPPOSITION TO HEATHEN" LITERATUEE 51 

contact with heathenism, unless secluded in cloisters. 

But in those ages, besides this not unfounded fear, 
the heathen were meeting the Christian doctrine of 
miracles with rival pretensions to supernatural powers 
and to gifts of prophecy which, with the easy credulity 
of superstitious ages, the Christians accepted as true 
and attributed to sorcery and to the baleful aid of an 
omnipresent devil, thus adding horror to their distrust 
of the heathen and all his works. 

It is needful also to bear in mind the idea of the 
sole end of man then strongly entertained by the en- 
tire Christian church. As antiquity had regarded 
man only as a citizen of this world, so the church 
looked on him only as a pilgrim to the unseen world, 
a view quite as one-sided though incomparably more 
worthy and elevated. Of what value then to such 
a pilgrim this vain world with the allurements of its 
literary graces, especially when such literature bore 
for the Christian the fatal stamp of heathen ideas! 

Unfortunately for the culture of the Middle Ages, 
this idea gained the mastery; the study of ancient 
literature and science mostly ceased; and thus, as 
Guizot remarks, the Christian world of Western Eu- 
rope deliberately cut itself loose from the past in 
which it had its roots. It was left to much more 
modern times to regard man more justly as a citizen 
of both worlds, so using this present time with all 
that is best in its accumulated stores as to become a 
more completely developed inheritor of the future 
world. 

Let it not be thought, however, that all the fathers 
of the church in the 3d and 4th centuries took this 



52 CHBISTIAN^ EDUCATION^ BEFORE CHARLEMAGlNrE 

narrow view of ancient literature. St. Basil (330- 
379), justly surnamed the Great, was more liberal and 
judicious. Like Plato he advised in the education of 
the young the discriminating use of the ancient poets, 
and especially Homer. He even thought that such a 
study would be a useful preparative for the deeper 
study of the scriptures ; and he adduces in support of 
this opinion the examples of Moses and Daniel, trained, 
the one in all the learning of the Egyptians, and the 
other in the deepest mysteries of the Chaldean lore, 
before occupying themselves with the religious con- 
templation whereby they became the law-giver and 
the prophet of their people. 

We may here call attention to the beginnings in 
these centuries of a distinctive church music, which 
originated in the regulation by St. Ambrose of the 
tonies and measures which were best adapted to the 
solemn services of the church. Hence the church 
issued from its early experiences supplied with its two 
earliest and too often exclusively used means for 
youthful education, viz., religious doctrines and 
church song. 

To these was added, when all the branches of the 
western church had come to look to Rome as their 
common centre and national head, the only language 
which in the Middle Ages could lay any claim to uni- 
versality, the Latin. This became not only the gen- 
eral vehicle for ideas to the learned among many 
widely scattered peoples, but also a kind of universal 
symbol of a common faith, a sign of Christian unity, 
indeed in some sort a sacred language, in which all 
who would officiate in the services of the church and 



CELEBKATED TEXT-BOOKS 53 

all who would aspire to influence in the gravest affairs, 
must be duly instructed. 

Here then we have outlined the staple of instruc- 
tion during a large part of the Middle Ages, and here 
the consecrated medium through which instruction 
was imparted. 

During the Middle Ages certain works had great 
celebrity as text-books, or, more properly speaking, as 
authorities, insomuch that they are of frequent men- 
tion in literary history, and hence they become import- 
ant factors in the educational history of the period. 
Both they and their authors had an importance and 
extent of influence that no text-book or its author 
has attained during the past five centuries. A few of 
these works deserve a brief mention here, in addition 
to the far earlier books described in my History of 
Ancient Education (chapter xviii, pp. 262-272). 

Martianus Capella, who is supposed to have died 
about 500 A. D., prepared a work in nine books on 
the liberal arts, in which verse is somewhat liberally 
interspersed. The arts are fancifully treated, since 
the first two books present science in general under 
the guise of a marriage of Mercury with Philology, 
merchandise with letters, utility with culture, at which 
the seven bridesmaids treat in turn of the seven liberal 
arts of the Middle Ages constituting the Trivium and 
Quadrivium. Extensive as its subject is, it is by no 
means a large book. The elementary treatment of 
any one of the arts that it touches would, at present, 
make quite as large a book. 

About the beginning of the 6th century treatise an- 
other on the seven liberal arts was written by Magnus 



54 CHBISTIAK EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGNE 

Aurelius Cassiodorus, a Roman of high rank who later 
became a monk. Schmidt says this treatise had great 
ecclesiastical favor as a school book, on account of the 
piety of its author, as well as because of its brevity. 

At nearly the same period as these two authors, 
Boethius, a man of noble Roman family, wrote in 
prison a work entitled " The Consolation of Philos- 
ophy ", in which also poetry is plentifully used. For 
many centuries this work was widely read in schools, 
and held well-nigh the place of a supplement to the 
Bible. Later it was translated into many languages, 
an English translation accompanied by a life of Boethius 
being published in 1695 by Richard, Lord Preston. 
Besides this work he composed also treatises on arith- 
metic, geometry, and music which were much used in 
schools, and were fuller and more satisfactory than 
those of Capella. 

Isidore, archbishop of Seville, (+ 636 A. D.) wrote 
a work in twenty books, which treats not only of the 
seven liberal arts but also of all other branches of 
knowledge then known to men, constituting a veritable 
encyclopcedia of the knowledge of the 7th century. 
This is probably the earliest encyclopaedia ever written, 
and is highly interesting as showing the range of sub- 
jects thought important in the 7th century. Beginning 
with the liberal arts, it ranges through ships and their 
equipment to household furniture, food, and even 
various kinds of drinking vessels. 

But of all the men who composed works used in the 
schools of the Middle Ages, none is more worthy of 
consideration by Englishmen or their descendants than 
Baeda, commonly known as the Venerable Bede. His 



CELEBEATED TEXT-BOOKS 55 

long and studious life, extending from 673 to 755 A. 
D., was passed chiefly in the monastery of Jarrow. 
Here he gradually mastered all the learning of his 
time, being skilled in Greek as well as Latin, a rare 
thing in his day. He, as well as Isadore, composed an 
encyclopaedic work for the use of his pupils, for he 
was all his life a teacher. He wrote also a long- 
esteemed • History of the English Church. His last 
labor was a translation of the Gospel of St. John into 
his native Anglo-Saxon tongue, and his choice of this 
gospel was wholly in harmony with his own gentle and 
spiritual character. The brief but affecting account 
of the life and death of this great English scholar and 
teacher in Green's •' Short History of the English 
People " will be read with interest by all who are at- 
tracted to educational history.^ 

Contemporaneous with Charlemagne and a pupil of 
Alcuin, was Rabanus Maurus, the head of the famous 
cloister-school of Fulda which still exists as a gymna- 
sium, who was later prince archbishop of Mainz, and 
who is known by the proud title *' Primus praeceptor 
Germanise." He too, besides other works used as 
school-books, wrote for the use of his pupils an ency- 
clopaedic work on all the sciences then known. It 
was evidently modelled on the earlier work of Isidore, 
draws from the same sources, treats much the same 
topics in its twenty-two books in nearly the same order, 
and shows the same lack of any effort at extending the 
boundaries of knowledge. 

The last of the famous mediaeval school-books that 
shall be named is the Doctrinale of Alex. Dolensis, 

■" — r — _^-____^.^___ 

*0P. cit. C. 1. Section 4th. 



56 CHEISTIAN^ EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAGI^E 

which was the great text-book of grammar from the 
13th to the 16th century, and was doubtless the dread 
of all school boys who conned its crabbed pages.* 

Such then were the chief text-books on which was 
based most of the instruction given during the Middle 
Ages. Let us now see what provisions for school in- 
struction existed during the first centuries of this 
period. From 500 to 1100 A. D. these were wholly of 
two kinds, viz. Monastic schools belonging to the mon- 
asteries and taught by the monks, and Cathedral schools 
established at the seats of bishops and carried on un- 
der their supervision. 

The monastic schools, which chiefly afforded educa- 
tion to others than monks, owe their origin to St. 
Benedict (-(- 543 A. D.), who founded an order of 
monks that take their name from him. His object 
was the combination of religious contemplation with 
labor; labor in agriculture and other employments 
adapted to the secluded life of monks; labor in tran- 
scribing and multiplying manuscripts and in the study 
of the Scriptures; labor also, which chiefly interests 
us here, in the instruction of the young. This instruc- 
tion was primarily intended for those who expected to 
devote themselves to the service of the church, but 
ultimately instruction was sought for from the monks 
by those who had no such intention. Hence grew up 
in the course of time a separation of their pupils into 
interns and externs^ or those taught within the cloisters 

* For further information on these old school-books, persons who do 
not care to go to the works themselves, which may be found in any consid- 
erable library, should consult Laurie's Rise and Const, of Univ's, C. IV; 
Schmidt. Gesch. der Padagogik, Vol. II, pp. 165-169, and Specht Gesch. des 
Unterrichtswesen in Deutschland, C. IV. 



MONASTIC AND CATHEDEAL SCHOOLS 57 

for the religious life, and those taught without for 
more secular purposes. 

These Benedictine communities multiplied rapidly 
over Europe, and extended the blessing of elementary 
and sometimes of more advanced instruction to not a 
few who contemplated secular vocations. Laurie says : 
*' It is to the monks of this rapidly-extending order, 
or to the influence which their rule exercised on other 
conventual orders, that we owe the diffusion of schools 
in the earlier half of the Middle Ages, and the preser- 
vation of ancient learning. The Benedictine monks 
not only taught in their own monasteries, but were 
everywhere in demand as heads of episcopal or cathe- 
dral schools."* 

The subjects taught in these schools were first of all 
reading, writing, and singing in accordance with the 
system of St. Ambrose. To these were added enough 
arithmetic to calculate the return of the church festi- 
vals, occasionally some reading of classic authors for 
merely grammatical purposes, and in some cases an 
exceedingly elementary study of the Trivial and Quad- 
rivial branches. The greatest extent of any of these 
branches may be seen by consulting the encyclopaedias 
of Isidore or Rabanus Maurus. 

Episcopal or cathedral schools of some kind doubt- 
less arose at a quite early period to subserve the abso- 
lute necessities of the bishops in providing clergy, 
readers, and choristers for the extension and even for 
the bare continuance of their work. Indeed we might 
consider the Catechetic school of Alexandria as the 
prototype of these schools. Their studies, aside from 

* Laurie- Rise and Constitution of Universities, Lecture 2d. 



58 CHEISTIAN EDUCATION BEFORE CHARLEMAa]S"E 

the natural religious training, embraced branches of 
the Trivium and Quadrivium ; but we have no reason 
to suppose that the instruction was other than of the 
most meagre and elementary character, presenting 
only such topics as were of the most obvious and press- 
ing necessity, and with little or no attention to the 
multiplication of manuscripts. It hardly need be 
said that the instruction in these schools as well as in 
the monasteries was given wholly in Latin. 

In the generation immediately preceding the activity 
of Charlemange, or about 750 A. D., Bishop Ohrode- 
gang of Metz made a vigorous effort to improve the 
Episcopal schools by settiagan example of their better 
organization,' and his exertions seem to have produced 
some little effect; but any considerable change for the 
better, both in these and in the monastic establish- 
ments, awaited the strong hand of the wise and ener- 
getic Charlemagne. 

The condition of learning previous to 790 A. D. may 
be briefly summed up in this way. Learning pertained 
chiefly to the clergy and was by no means universal 
even among them. The peasantry as a class were 
taught only the dogmas of the church, though, in ac- 
cordance with the democratic spirit that, to its honor, 
has always animated the Roman Catholic church, 
boys of ambition and promise from any class could 
gain ready admission to whatever opportunities for 
learning were available, and a capitulary of Charle- 
magne gives reason to believe that boys of humble 
birth formed the majority of the pupils. Nobles and 
princes, at the best, learned only the elements of 
knowledge, together with church doctrines and sing- 



CON"DITION OF LEARNING, 790 A. D. 59 

ing, to which was added in the case of princes some 
elementary knowledge of whatever laws then existed. 
The ability to read and write was more common 
among noble girls than among their brothers, but for 
the best educated girls who were taught in the clois- 
ters, the chief subjects were church observances, 
domestic duties, and embroidery; and it is doubtful 
whether the small modicum of learning here enumer- 
ated existed to any considerable extent in the wide 
Frankish dominions until near the time of Charle- 
mange.* 

Even the consecrated language, the Latin, had de- 
generated and become barbarized. What better could 
be looked for when even so enlightened a prelate as 
Gregory the Great thought it shameful that the lan- 
guage of the Holy Spirit should be subjected to the 
petty restraints of grammar ? f 

In the times of which we are speaking Ireland and 
England were confessedly the brightest abodes of 
Christian learning. The suspicion of dislike of hea- 
then literature and science had not affected them 
seriously, and hence both Greek and Latin literature — 
the Greek more especially in Ireland — were cultivated 
in their monasteries with a zeal and success not exhib- 
ited elsewhere. The Venerable Bede was doubtless far 
above an average specimen of monkish learning in the 
early part of the 8th century, even in these favored 
islands, as yet comparatively little troubled by devas- 
tating wars; yet there can be no doubt that in. the 

*Mullinger-Schools of Charlemagne, p. 68. Specht, Gesch. des Unter- 
richtswesens, etc. 1st chapter expresses a different opinion. 

t Schmidt, Geschichte der PSdagogik. Vol. 2, p. 188; and Hallam, Mid- 
dle Ages, C. IX part 1st, 



60 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION BEFOEE CHARLEMAGNE 

schools of Ireland and England, and especially in those 
of Jarrow and York, there was a relatively high grade 
of scientific attainment. 

Thus Alcuin is quoted by Guizot J as saying of that 
of York in his day, about 760 A. D., " The learned 
Albert gave drink to thirsty minds at the sources of 
various studies and sciences. To some he was eager 
to communicate the art and rules of Grammar; for 
others he caused the waves of Rhetoric to flow. He 
exercised these in the combats of jurisprudence and 
those in the songs of Adonia. Some learned from him 
to sound the pipes of Castalia, and to strike with lyric 
foot the summits of Parnassus. To others he taught 
the harmony of the heavens, the works of the sun and 
moon, the five zones of the pole, the seven wander- 
ing stars, the laws of the course of the stars, their 
appearance and decline, the motions of sea, the tremb- 
lings of the earth, the nature of men, of beasts and 
birds, and the inhabitants of woods; he unveiled the 
various qualities and the combinations of numbers; he 
taught how to calculate with certainty the solemn re- 
turn of Easter; and, above all he explained the mys- 
teries of the Holy Scriptures." 

From this description, whose evident inflation of 
style is due to the fact that it is a cold prose rendering 
of what was poetry in the original, we learn that in 
York there was, for that period, a generous course of 
study, including not only most of the seven liberal 
arts, but also jurisprudence, natural history, and the 
exposition of the Scriptures. 

It happened from this better state of learning in 

t History of Civilization in France, Lecture 22. 



THE DANISH IKVASIOl!^ 61 

these islands that not a few scholars were summoned 
thence to promote learning in the continent, amongst 
whom was Alcuin himself, as we shall presently see, 
and, at a later day, John Scotus Erigena, whose name 
indicates his Irish origin. This brighter condition of 
learning, however, was doomed to a rude interruption, 
early in the 9th century, from the Danish invasions, 
which wrought such havoc in the places of study that 
in 871, when Alfred the Great came to the throne, he 
testifies that he could not " remember one south of 
Thames who could explain his service book in Eng- 
lish "; whilst in the northern part of England '' the 
Danish sword had left few survivors of the school of 
Ecgberht or Baeda."* 

* Green, Short History of the English People. Sec. V. 



CHAPTEE III 

THE EEYIYAL OF LEAEN^ING IN THE KIKTH CEKTUEY 

When the state of learning in England and Western 
Europe was such as has been described in the preced- 
ing chapter, two monarchs arose who, in the last part 
of the 8th century and in the 9th, made vigorous and 
to a considerable degree successful efforts for the in- 
crease and reform of schools, and for the revival of the 
literary spirit. These were Charlemange in Western 
Europe, -f- 814, and the English Alfred, -f 901. 

Charlemagne, distinguished as a conqueror whose 
dominions extended over much of Europe, was also 
wise enough to desire that his monarchy should be 
characterized not less by its enlightenment than by its 
extent. To promote the culture which he desired, he 
made use of the clergy as the only learned class; but 
he was sagacious enough to look far beyond the then 
narrow limits of ecclesiastical learning, and to grasp 
all the best elements of progress then available among 
all the nations that he ruled. As a faithful son of the 
church he desired a learned clergy ; but as a wise ruler 
he evidently regarded such a clergy as instruments for 
the elevation, through education, of the masses of his 
subjects, rather than as mere guardians of ecclesiastical 
lore. 

We shall most easily gain a clear view of Charle- 
magne's efforts for the advancement of learning by 

(62) 



chaelemagn^e's lettee to bangule. 63 

considering separately the four most characteristic 
phases of these efforts : 

(1) his improvement of the instrumentalities through 
which he must work, 

(2) his measures for the founding or reformation of 
schools, 

(8) his encouragement of the use of the various 
vernaculars that prevailed among his subjects, as a 
means for bringing learning within their reach, 

(4) the learned men, especially Alcuin, whom he 
invited to supervise pr further his designs. 

(1) The instruments on whom he must depend to 
further any efforts that he might make for the im- 
provement of education, were obviously the monks 
and clergy, for they were ex officio the representatives 
and conservators of whatever learning existed within 
his realm. But the intellectual and moral condition 
of this class was at that time not encouraging.* His 
first care must therefore obviously be given to making 
them what they should be in life and conduct, and to 
secure in them a respectable grade of learning, as well 
scientific as ecclesiastical. He therefore issued to the 
superior clergy edicts for the improvement of those un- 
der their supervision, of which a good example is his cir- 
cular letter of 787 A. D. to Bangulf, Abbot of Fulda. 

Guizot in his 22d lecture on the History of Civiliza- 
tion in France gives with some ommissions a transla- 
tion of this imperial circular which I copy here, adding 
an omitted sentence which is suited to our purpose 
from another version, f 

* See Mullinger, The Schools of Charlemagne, p. 37 et seq. 
t A translation of the entire capitulary maybe found in Mullinger, Op. 
Cit. p. 98. 



64 [the ninth century revival 

" Charles by the grace of God, etc., to Bangulf, 
Abbot, and his brotherhood, health: We beg to inform 
j-our Devotion to God that, in concert with our coun- 
cillors, we have deemed it beneficial that in the bish- 
oprics and monasteries confided to our government by 
favor of Christ, care should be taken, not only to live 
orderly and according to our holy religion, but more- 
over to instruct in the knowledge of letters, and ac- 
cording to the capacity of individuals, all such as are 
willing and able to learn by God's help. For though 
of the two it is better to be good than to be learned, 
yet to have knowledge leads to being good. 

" In the various letters addressed to us from monas- 
teries, announcing that the brethren continued to 
pray for us in their holy ceremonies, and in their pri- 
vate orisons, we have remarked that for the most part, 
while the sentiments were excellent the language in 
which they were conveyed was generally rude and illit- 
erate. ^ ^ ^ This inspired us with an apprehen- 
sion that the same want of ability which prevented 
men from writing properly must also operate in keep- 
ing them from a due understanding of the holy Scrip- 
tures. It is certain, at all events, that the allegories, 
emblems, and imagery of the holy writings, will be 
more readily comprehended in their true spiritual mean- 
ing by those who are versed in general learning. 

" We therefore would have you select from among 
your brethren such as may be best fitted, for first ac- 
quiring themselves and then communicating to others a 
knowledge of letters ; and let such proceed to their task 
with the least possible delay. As you value our favor 
fail not to communicate copies of this communication to 




CHAKLEMAGNE, 742-814 



(65) 



chaelemagke's lettek to bakgulf 67 

all the suSragan bishops and all the monasteries around 
you ; and let no monk go beyond his monastery to ad- 
minister justice, or to enter the assemblies and the 
voting places. Adieu." 

This imperial circular shows the earnest desire of 
Charlemagne that hi§ clergy should be brought back to 
purity of morals and regularity of life, although he 
cautiously refrains from directly charging them with 
any delinquencies; that they should strive after a de- 
cent standard of scholarship, sagaciously basing his 
anxiety on this account on a motive likely to be influ- 
ential with the clerical mind, that they might be the 
better able to understand the Scriptures; and that 
they should select and establish those skilful to teach. 
The final sentence conveys a warning against meddling 
with political and judicial affairs, to which we may in- 
fer from this that the monks and clergy had become 
addicted, to the neglect of their own proper duties. 
Noteworthy also is the emphasis with which he demands 
that his wishes in all these respects should be strictly 
observed. 

Evidences are not wanting that this circular of Char- 
lemagne had its desired effect. One of the most inter- 
esting of these is an autobiographic account by Wal- 
afried Strabo, of the teachers, subjects, and methods of 
study in the monastry of Eeichenau on Lake Con- 
stance, from the year 815 to 825 A. D., during which 
time he was a pupil there.* This account by one of 
the pupils from his own standpoint, testifies to a con- 
dition of studies and to an ability and zeal on the 

* This account may be found in full in Schmidt, Geschiclite der Pad- 
agogik, vol. 2d pp. 197-212. 



68 THE NIlfTH CENTURY REVIVAL 

part of teachers at this monastery which is highly credi- 
table. That it was no isolated instance is shown by 
the fact that Strabo went later to advance his learning 
at Fulda, then under the charge of Eabanus Maurus, 
'' Primus praeceptor Germanise", and returned thence 
to Eeichenau as teacher and ultimately as abbot. This 
two-fold fact is a striking indication of the effective- 
ness of Charlemagne's efforts. 

It is worthy of note that Charlemagne by his own 
example added weight to his commands ; for he. was a 
zealous student himself, had a school of the palace for 
himself and those who surrounded him which followed 
him wherever he went, and is even said to have learned 
to write after he came to the throne, though the testi- 
mony of his friend Eginhard shows that he never suc- 
ceeded in writing well. What courtier, what ecclesi- 
astic could fail to put new vigor into his efforts for 
learning, when he saw his sovereign, busy with wars 
and perplexed by the affairs of a vast empire, using 
whatever spare moments he could steal from the duties 
of his station, in the improvement of his learning ! 

(2) Having cared for the improvement of those who 
should be teachers of the young, the emperor turned 
his attention to the increase of schools, requiring that 
*' in every episcopal see and every monastery, there 
should be a school for instruction in the Psalms, sing- 
ing, notation, counting, and the Latin tongue, and 
that the pupils should be supplied with accurately 
transcribed text-books."* One of the most energetic 
of his prelates, Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, even 

* See also Mullinger, Schools of Charles the Great, for a capitulary 
of 789 A. D. to the same effect. P. 100. 





ALFRED THE GREAT, 849-901 ORIGEN ADAMANTIUS 185?-253 ? 

See page 4& 





HIPPOCRATES, 460-875? B. C. 
See page 27 



GALEN, 130-300 ' 
See page 27 





EUCLID, 300 ?— ? B. C. 
See page 27 



(69) 



ARISTOTLE, 384-322 B. C. 
See page 142 



charlemagi^e's zeal for learning 71 

ordered his clergy to establish schools in all the villages 
and towns, where elementary instruction should be 
gratuitously given to all willing youth. 

It is also believed by some that Charlemagne had in 
view the general education of the masses of his people 
in the elements of learning, and that such education 
should be enforced by penalties for neglect. This idea 
seems incredible to the point of absurdity, when we 
consider the unsettled character of the age, the lack 
of teachers, the scarcity and cost of books and writing 
materials, and the task which it would have involved 
of teaching a strange language to the masses of the 
people. Yet it evinces the impression produced by 
the zeal of the emperor for promoting learning. 

He not only cared for founding schools, but in some 
cases made personal examination of the progress of the 
pupils. A story that is told of him illustrates this. 
It is to the effect that having established a school in 
which boys of the noble class and others even of the 
lowest rank were taught together, on his return from 
one of his journeys, he caused their written exercises 
to be submitted to him; and then placing the idle sons 
of nobles on his left hand, and the poor but industri- 
ous lads on his right, he thus addressed the noble 
culprits: '' Ye sons of nobles, ye pretty fellows, who 
think yourselves so high-born that ye have no need to 
learn, ye lazy graceless scamps, I tell you that your 
high-birth and your pretty faces shall avail you noth- 
ing. If you do not change your course and improve 
yourselves, ye shall become grooms and not counts and 
marshals as your fathers are." This energetic kind 
of school inspection by the sovereign himself, even if 



72 THE KINTH CENTURY EEYIYAL 

of no frequent occurrence, was likely to be more than 
usually influential. 

(3) It may readily be supposed that a sovereign so 
sagacious as Charlemagne would not fail to observe 
how serious an obstacle to his efforts for the spread of 
learning and for the growth of his people in the ap- 
prehension of religious truth, was presented by the 
fact that all school instruction and all church services 
were couched in a language unknown to the people. 
For more than two centuries before his time, the 
Latin, current in large portions of his dominions, had 
been undergoing a progressive change from its original 
purity, and the germs of several modern tongues were 
rapidly taking form in popular use. His Germanic 
subjects had a language of their own which underwent 
less change. 

Hence he set himself vigorously to encourage the 
cultivation of the German vernacular, and to bring 
religious truths home to the minds of the people by 
their presentation in the mother tongue. He is said 
himself to have essayed the preparation of a German 
grammar, doubtless by other hands more skilled with 
the pen than his, and to have made a collection of the 
old German heroic songs which were current among 
the people.* From the year preceding his death, the 
clergy of the west who were under the government of 
Charlemagne made a considerable use of the vernacu- 
lar tongues in preaching, and in instruction in the es- 
sentials of the Catholic faith, '^Fulda and St. Gall seem- 
ing to have been special centres of influence for the 

* Schmidt, Gesch. der Padagogik. Vol, 2d pp. 216 and 217 quotes author- 
ities lor this. See also J. Freundgen's account of Kabanus Maurus, p. 26, 
prefixed to a collection of his pedagogic writings. 



CHAKLEM AGILE'S HELPEES 73 

use of the German. Under Charles the Bald, grand- 
son of Charlemagne, the French language is said to 
have been used to some extent as a literary language, 
as well as in the speech of the people. This is an eyi- 
dence of the continuing influence of the efforts of 
Charlemagne in this interesting direction. 

(4) Haying now discussed Charlemagne's efforts for 
the promotion of education in his dominions, under 
the three points of yiew, the better training of the 
monks and clergy who were the instruments that he 
must use in his reforms ; the spread of schools through- 
out his empire and the revival of those that already 
existed, at least in name ; and his encouragement of 
the use in instruction and in worship of the vernacular 
tongues that had sprung up in his wide dominions, 
with his special efforts for the German which was his 
own native speech, we have to consider finally the men 
whom he summoned to his aid from a distance, and 
what they did for the advancement of learning. 

Like all great rulers, Charlemagne knew how to dis- 
tinguish, encourage, and reward men of uncommon 
merit; and, by this means, while furthering his own 
ends by their service, he also adorned his reign by the 
fruits of their genius. Thus, to confine ourselves 
solely to that which concerns learning, he first discerned 
the merit of Leidrade, though dwelling on the con- 
fines of his empire, and after testing him as librarian 
and royal messenger, he elevated him to the archbish- 
opric of Lyons, where he greatly aided the educational 
views of his sovereign. 

Thus he summoned from Italy Theodulf, an Italian 
Goth, and made him bishop of Orleans, where he dis- 



74 THE NINTH CENTURY REVIVAL 

tinguished himself by that zeal for the extension of 
schools that has already been mentioned. 

Thus he brought up at his court the promising 
youth, Eginhard, raised him from post to post till he 
became his trusted councillor and, as vague tradition 
says, also his son-in-law; and by this means he unwit- 
tingly trained up him who should afterwards transmit 
to posterity his name and deeds in the best literary 
work which that age produced. 

Thus when two young Irish scholars had astonished 
the crowds in the market place of Aix-la-Chapelle by 
crying, " Whosoever wants knowledge let him come to 
us and get it, for we have it for sale," and when some, 
thinking that they must be madmen to be thus hawk- 
ing so strange a commodity, brought to the palace the 
news of their curious conduct, the emperor at once 
sent for them, and finding that they were really learned 
men who asked no other price for their scientific wares 
than " a place to teach them in, pupils to learn them, 
and needful food and rainent ", attached one of them 
to his own School of the Palace and sent the other to 
Italy as the head of a school in Pa via. 

But most notably of all he displayed his sagacity by 
enticing from the famous school of York its most dis- 
tinguished ornament, Alcuin, to be his trusted adviser 
and minister in all that concerned the advancement of 
learning. 

This eminent man, who was reputed to be the most 
learned scholar of the 8th century, was born at York 
about 735 A. D., was educated at the famous school 
of his native city, mastering all the learning then cur- 
rent, and finally on the retirement"of his*relative and 




ST. AUGUSTINE, 334-430 
See. page 48 




ST. JEROME, 340?-420 

[See page 48 




ST. ERA K CIS OF ASSISl 
1182-1226 




ST. AMBROSE, 340?-397 
See page 52 




ST. BERNARD, 1091-1153 




ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, 1225-1274 
See page 136 



(75) 



ALCUIF 77 

teacher became head of the school. In 781, while on 
the return from an honorable mission to Rome, at 
Parma he attracted the attention of Charlemagne, who 
in the following year invited him to his court to become 
his adviser in all matters that concerned education. 

Whilst in learning Alcuin undoubtedly surpassed all 
his contemporaries, he does not seem to have been a 
man of any originality of genius. A devoted adherent 
of the Eoman hierarchy, and implicitly subservient to 
the authority of the Latin fathers, his ability was dis- 
played chiefly in digesting, classifying, and arranging 
the stores of the past rather than in striking out any 
new ideas of his own. This kind of ability eminently 
fitted him as well for his most weighty service to the 
future of learning in the revision and correction of 
faulty manuscripts, as for success in his duties as a 
teacher. He was besides endowed with a lively imagin- 
ation, and this he displayed in fanciful and often far- 
fetched analogies in his teaching, somewhat after the 
fashion of Origen, the influence of which was apparent 
much later in the theology of the Mediaeval Universities. 

In the 22d Lecture of his ** History of Civilization 
in France ", Guizot gives an interesting account of the 
services of this distinguished Englishman while at the 
court of Charlemagne. He states as the most impor- 
tant of Alcuin's practical contributions to learning, 
his correction and restoration of the manuscripts of 
ancient literature, his agency in the revival of public 
schools and studies, and his own personal work as 
teacher. I quote from Guizot his account of the re- 
vision of manuscripts, omitting only the embodied 
capitulary of Charlemagne which sets forth the need 



78 THE NIKTH CENTURY REVIVAL 

of this revision^ and recommends its results to all 
ministers of religion throughout his realm. 

*' From the 6th to the 8th century the ancient man- 
uscripts had gone through the hands of copyists so 
ignorant that the texts had become altogether unrecog- 
nizable; infinite passages had been mutilated and mis- 
placed; the leaves were in the utmost disorder; all 
orthographical and grammatical correctness had dis- 
appeared; to read and understand the works thus 
injured required absolute science, and of science there 
was less and less every day. To remedy this evil, to 
restore ancient manuscripts to their proper reading and 
order, to correct their orthography and their grammar, 
was one of the first tasks to which Alcuin applied him- 
self; a task which continued to occupy him throughout 
the remainder of his life, which he constantly recom- 
mended to his pupils, and in the fulfilment of which 
he was supported by Charlemagne's authority. He 
concluded it about the year 801, in the abbey of St. 
Martin de Tours, and sent it to Charlemagne. 

*' Such examples and such orders (as those of Char- 
lemagne), could not fail of effect, and the ardor for 
the reproduction of ancient manuscripts became gen- 
eral; as soon as an exact revision of any work had 
been completed by Alcuin or one of his disciples, 
copies of it were transmitted to the principal churches 
and abbeys, where fresh copies were made for diffusion 
amongst the lesser churches and abbeys. The art of 
copying became a source of fortune, of glory even; 
the monasteries in which the most correct and beauti- 
ful copies were executed attained celebrity on this sole 
account; and in each monastery, the monks who most 



ALCUIN 79 

excelled in the art were, in like manner, honored among 
their brethren. — The monastic libraries soon became 
very considerable in their extent; a great number of ex- 
isting manuscripts date from this period ; and though its 
zeal was more peculiarly directed to sacred literature, 
profane literature was not altogether neglected." 

It will readily be seen from this account that no 
more weighty service could have been rendered at that 
time to the cause of learning which Charlemagne had 
so much at heart, nor one which had so great promise 
of permanent benefits. The schools might fall into 
neglect, as many of them in reality did in the ages 
succeeding the death of Charlemagne, but the manu- 
scripts were likely to remain as a treasure-house of 
learning to future studious generations. 

In the reestablishment and spread of schools which 
at this time had fallen everywhere into decay, even in 
those few places where they had earlier existed, the 
agency of Alcuin was so intimately connected with the 
efforts of the sovereign whose minister he was, that it 
has already been described in previous paragraphs, and 
needs little farther notice. There can be little doubt 
that the capitularies respecting education owed their 
literary form to the skilful pen of Alcuin; but his 
lack of originality and of independent initiative that 
has before been mentioned, make it reasonable to sup- 
pose that the main ideas to be conveyed and the meas- 
ures to be adopted originated with the emperor rather 
than with his minister. 

Alcuin's services as a teacher were probably limited 
at first to " the School of the Palace, which accom- 
panied Charlemagne wherever he went, and at which 



80 THE NIIfTH CEKTUET KEYIYAL 

were regularly present all those who were with the 
emperor". Later however his labors as a teacher 
were not confined within this narrow compass; for 
Guizot says of him that most of the men who did 
honor to the great monastic schools, like those of 
Fulda, Reichenau, and Fontenelle, which now sprang 
into celebrity, *' had been disciples of Alcuin himself, 
who, amid all his avocations, was a public preacher and 
a public teacher of great distinction." This was 
especially true of his last years, after he had retired 
from court and assumed the duties of Abbot at St. 
Martin de Tours. 

Of the form and method of Alcuin's instruction we 
have some information in his text-books for grammar, 
rhetoric, etc., which still exist, and in a specimen 
lesson which Guizot gives nearly entire in the 22d lec- 
ture of his History of Civilization in France. In 
these his instruction has the dialogue or catechetic 
form, and is strongly marked by that tendency to a 
fanciful and allegoric mode of exposition to which 
attention has been before directed. Alcuin's dialogue 
method of teaching grammar, and the entire meagre, 
authoritative, and often fanciful instruction of the 
Palace School, its marked lack of originality, and the 
meagre second-hand knowledge of Greek displayed by 
him, are sketched in lively colors by Mullinger in his 
history of the Schools of Charlemagne, pp. 75-89. 

Yet some persons looking only on the surface of 
things have been inclined to liken the method of 
Alcuin to that of Socrates, and to claim for him some- 
thing of the merit of Socrates. How superficial was 
the resemblance of the two methods, extending only 




SOCEATES, 470-399, B. C. 
See page 80 




PETER ABELARD, 1079-1142 
See page 120 





BEDE, 673?-735 
See page 54 




ROGER BACON, 1214S1294; 
See page 133 




LEOxNARDA OF PISA, ?-, FRANCESCO PETRARCH, 1304-1374 

See page 160 

(81) 



alcuijnf 83 

to their catechetic form, will be readily apparent from 
one of these so-called Socratic lessons given by Guizot. 

The interlocutors are Pepin, a son of Charlemagne, 
and Alcuin, the former of whom asks questions and 
the latter answers. 

P. — What is writing ? 

A. — The keeper of history. 

P. — What is speaking ? 

A. — The interpreter of the soul. 

P. — What is it gives birth to speaking ? 

A. — The tongue. 

P. — What is the tongue ? 

A. — The whip of the air. 

P.— What is the air? 

A. — The preserver of life. 

P.— What is life ? 

A. — Happiness for the happy, misery for the miser- 
able, the expectation of death. 

P.— What is death ? 

A. — An inevitable event, a doubtful journey, a sub- 
ject of tears for the living, the confirmation of wills, 
the robber of men. 

P. — What is man ? 

A. — The slave of death, a passing traveller, a guest 
in his own abode. 

P. — What is winter ? 

A. — The exile of spring. 

P. — What is spring ? 

A. —The painter of the earth. 

P. — What is summer ? 

A. — The power which clothes the earth and ripens 
fruits.' 



84 THE NINTH CENTUEY EEVIYAL 

P. — What is autumn ? 

A. — The granary of the year. 

P, — What is the year ? 

A. — The chariot of the world, etc. 

It is not difficult to see that these fanciful and far- 
fetched analogies given in answer to the eager ques- 
tions of a mere school boy, or the other portions of 
the same dialogue in which Alcuin, becoming ques- 
tioner, proposes riddles for the prince to guess, bear no 
resemblance whatever to the searching dialectic method 
of the Grecian sage, whereby he exposed pretentious 
error to itself, or pushed some vaguely apprehended 
truth to its necessary consequences. Indeed, if we 
are to consider them as anything more serious than a 
mere pastime, intended as an amusement of a leisure 
hour, we should doubtless say with Guizot that " as a 
means of education, these conversations are altogether 
and strangely puerile," and that '' if the influence of 
Alcuin had been confined within the walls of this 
academy, it would have effected little worthy of our 
notice." 

This can, however, be no fair specimen of his in- 
struction given at the abbey of St. Martin de Tours, 
where he spent, chiefly in teaching, the closing years 
of his life. These lessons were addressed to disciples 
who were more thoroughly trained than the retainers 
of the court, and who had an object deeper than the 
qualification of a vague half -barbarian curiosity. Gui- 
zot has however given us no specimens of Alcuin's 
procedure with the distinguished disciples like Ra- 
banus Maurus who went forth from his lessons to shed 
lustre by their educational efforts on the age in which 



ALCUIK 85 

they lived. Probably no record of such lessons exists; 
but it is certain that the specimens we have received 
have in them nothing of the method or the spirit of 
Socrates. 

In 796 Alcuin assumed his duties as abbot of St. 
Martin, and the remaining years of his life were spent 
in the management of the large interests of his monas- 
tery, in teaching theology to the group of eager and 
promising young men who were drawn together by his 
great reputation, and in an active correspondence, 
largely on educational matters, with his former pupils 
and with the emperor. 

This seemingly calm period of repose after a useful 
career, was, however, not free from vexations. He 
was evidently deeply moved by the favor with which 
Clement, an Irish scholar, was received at court, ap- 
prehending an influence subversive of some of his 
cherished ideas from the introduction of a type of 
scholarship in many respects unlike his own. For the 
Irish scholars of that age were skilled in Greek, in 
which Alcuin's attainments were very slender; they 
had a great regard for the Greek fathers and for Mar- 
tianus Oapella, both of whom Alcuin as an adherent of 
extreme Romish ideas persistently ignored; and they 
were besides unusually proficient in astronomy, which 
made them formidable adversaries of the side favored 
by Alcuin in a vivid controversy waged at that time 
about the right date of Easter. 

The eager and inquiring spirit of the emperor soon 
showed the effects of novel views, and he distressed 
his old friend by frequent doubts of the validity of 
his former teachings, presented in the form of ques- 



86 THE KINTH OENTUEY REVIYAL 

tions to be solved, — truly a distressful position for an 
authority hitherto counted omniscient. The death 
of Alcuin, which occurred in 804 in his 70th year, is 
attributed by some authors to his grief and mortifica- 
tion at a reproof of Charles on a perhaps injudicious 
use in a broil of his authority as abbot. 

The liability to overestimate the extent and depth of 
the education given, which is everywhere great during 
mediaeval times, is especially great in the early period 
that we have been considering ; for it is easy to give a 
considerable list of monasteries and cathedral schools 
which gained fame, and yet which were dotted over 
vast spaces of territory and were often separated some- 
what widely in time — space and time estimates are apt 
to lose some of their importance when they relate to 
remote periods; so too it is easy to make a respectable 
enumeration of studies pursued, some here and some 
occasionally there, and from data of this vague char- 
acter, without a rigid scrutiny as to how much knowl- 
edge was really implied under some large sounding 
title, it is easy to infer that the benefits of education 
were more widely available and more generally enjoyed 
than they really were. Yet from what has been said 
in the preceding pages we may, I think, safely concede 
that the movement initiated by Charlemagne and 
inspired by his efforts deserved the lofty title of the 
First Renaissance which has sometimes been given to 
it; although unhappily, from the disorders of times 
which succeeded his death, this movement met with 
a serious check. 

Louis the Debonnaire, the first heir to the empire, 
distinguished not more for his ascetic piety than for 



JOHK SCOTUS ERIGINA 87 

his misfortunes resulting from feebleness of will, strove 
to continue the policy which his great father had in- 
itiated. During his troubled reign, Rabanus Maurus, 
a pupil of Alcuin and graced with the proud but well- 
deserved title " Preceptor Germanige ", raised the 
school of Fulda to a widely-recognized pre eminence; 
wrote pedagogic works distinguished rather for good 
sense and clearness of presentation than for any origin- 
ality of view, which have recently been found worthy 
to be presented in a German dress; and later as arch- 
bishop of Mainz insisted that the clergy of his diocese 
should preach in the vulgar tongue, " that the com- 
mon people might be confirmed in their faith and 
improved in their morals." 

Under the favoring care of Charles the Bald, son 
of Louis, who in the division of the empire inherited 
the kingdom of France, the intellectual movement 
still retained some vigor, its most distinguished repre- 
sentatives being Lupus Servatus and John Scotus 
Erigena. 

The former, who was a pupil of Rabanus Maurus 
and abbot of Ferrieres during the times of the incur- 
sions of the Northmen, was held in the highest repute 
for his character, his diplomatic ability, and above all 
for his learning and for the distinguished support 
which he gave to classic studies during the decay of 
learning that followed the breaking up of the empire. 

Scotus Erigena, as his name indicates, was an Irish 
scholar of even more than the usual Irish independ- 
ence of opinion. He asserted the claims of classic 
literature, and gave such prominence to the philosophy 
of Plato and Aristotle as to attract to it and to him- 



88 THE NIKTH CENTUKY REVIVAL 

self a bitter clerical hostility. He filled the measure 
of his demerits when invited by Bishop Hincmar to 
enter the lists in one of the trivial religious contro- 
versies which were then so bitterly waged ; for he not 
only dared to assert the claims of reason over mere 
unsupported authority, but he also used and defended 
the use of a dialectical method of treatment which 
was still discountenanced by the church, thus becom- 
ing from afar the forerunner of the later scholastic 
method, though without its servility to authority. 
On this account his brilliant career ended in obscurity, 
though it has been asserted on somewhat doubtful au- 
thority that he was later active at the court of Alfred 
the Great. 

In the succeeding period learning so far retrograded 
in Western Europe that the 10th and 11th centuries 
are considered by some authors the darkest period of 
the Middle Ages. Yet I am disposed to think that 
the impulse given to mind by Charlemagne never wholly 
ceased; that many of the schools which he established 
continued, though obscurely, to do their work, that in 
the words of Hallam * " France seems to have been 
uniformly though very slowly progressive from the 
time of Charlemagne; " that it would even be not 
impossible to construct a nearly unbroken succession 
of teachers of some note from Alcuin to William of 
Champeaux and Abelard, as Mullinger has donef; 
and that, though the movement of mind took a new 
form and passed into other and ruder hands than 
those of the learned class, it was still doing its work 

* Middle Ages, C. IX, p. 400. 
tOp. Cit., final chapter.o 



ALFRED THE GREAT 89 

of preparing the way for the 12th century Renaissance. 

But while the torch of learning on the continent of 
Europe seemed about to be extinguished, it was 
grasped and borne aloft for a time by the English 
Alfred, who became the representative of the First 
Renaissance during the last decades of the 9th century. 
The condition in which he found learning in the south 
west part of England over which he ruled, and which, 
according to Hallam, was then the most enlightened 
portion of the island, has already been mentioned ; — 
he knew not a single clergyman south of the Thames 
who understood the ordinary prayers or could translate 
them into English, having merely memorized them as 
a formula to be used in the church service. If such 
was the condition of the class nominally learned, what 
could^^be lookedjf or'f rom the laity ! 

Against the prevailing ignorance this energetic king 
made a valiant struggle during the last two decades of 
his reign, ** intent to leave to the men that came after 
him a remembrance of himself in good works." Like 
Charlemagne he had a keen judgment of the merits 
of men; and, since learning was at so low an ebb in 
his own realm, he summoned from abroad men like 
Grimbald and the "Welch Asser, whom he placed at the 
head of monasteries to instruct his clergy. *' He him- 
self superintended a school which he had established 
for the young nobles of his court," after the manner 
of Charlemagne. 

Like Charlemagne also he saw the vital necessity, if 
learning and religion were to obtain any organic hold 
upon the minds of the people, that both learning and 
religion should be presented to them in their own 



90 THE NIKTH CENTURY REVIVAL 

native tongue. " Let us endeavor," he says, " that 
all the English youth, especially the children of those 
who are free-born and can educate them, may learn to 
read English before they take to any employment. 
Afterwards such as please may learn Latin."* 

To accomplish this end, the king himself was forced 
virtually to create a vernacular prose literature, which 
he did by translating works like the History of Bede 
and the Consolations of Boethius. These works he 
enriched by remarks and additions of his own. Hav- 
ing thus brought the means of learning within the 
easy reach of his people, it is said, I know not with 
how much truth, that he required such magistrates as 
were unable to read to remedy their deficiencies or to 
give place to more learned men. 

Under the fostering care of Alfred the English 
monasteries became again nurseries of learning and not 
a few schools were opened. It has even been claimed, 
but with little show of credibility, that the university 
of Oxford grew out of a school founded by Alfred. 

But the impulse given by him, vigorous though it 
was, must have been evanescent; for in the time of 
Dunstan, primate of England towards the close of the 
century in which Alfred died, Hallam says that none 
of the clergy knew how to write or translate a Latin 
letter; and at the time of the Norman conquest the 
English are described as " rude and almost illiterate ", 
doubtless as a consequence of the Danish invasions. 
Here as elsewhere learning was suppressed by times of 
conflict and disorder. Amidst the clash of arms, lit- 
erature as well as laws was forced to silence. 

* Hallam, Middle Ages. C. IX, part 1st foot note to page 460, quoted from 
Spelman-Vita Alfred. 




A SCHOOL OF MENDICANT MONKS. (From Cubberley's Syllabus of 

Eduoatiou. after a miuiature of the 15th century, iu the Burgundy 

library, Brussels) 

(91) 



CHAPTER IV 

THE KELAPSE OF THE TEKTH AKD ELEVENTH CEN- 
TURIES, AND CAUSES OF THE TWELFTH CEN- 
TURY RENAISSANCE 

The first revival of learning in the ninth century 
was succeeded by nearly two centuries of educational 
lethargy and ignorance. Learning sank again into 
neglect, and whatever of it survived seems to have 
resumed an ecclesiastical character. The episcopal 
schools in some places still continued; the Benedictine 
monasteries still taught the few who resorted to them ; 
save perhaps in a few monasteries, like those of Paris 
and Rheims, Orleans and Erfurt, the staple of instruc- 
tion in both these classes of schools was, besides relig- 
ion, the dryest and most barren parts of the trivium. 
and quadrivium, presented in barbarous Latin and im- 
pressed upon the memory by a free use of the rod. 

The good old times of ignorance returned. Says 
Hallam, " In almost every council, the ignorance of 
the clergy forms a subject of reproach. It was asserted 
in one held in 992, that scarcely a person was to be 
found in Rome itself who knew the first elements of 
letters." Laurie says, " King, baron, and knight, 
had. a contempt for those who professed even an ele- 
mentary knowledge of letters." It was in the early 
part of the eleventh century that the already quoted 
assertion was made by a high church dignity that some 

(93) 



94 TENTH CENTURY EELAPSE 

of his fellow archbishops did not know even the 
alphabet. 

In an autobiographical narration of G-uibert de No- 
gent, quoted by Guizot,* we have a vivid picture of 
the extreme difficulties encountered even by a young 
noble, in the last half of the eleventh century, in his 
attempts to acquire a tolerable education to fit him for 
the priesthood, as well as of the exceeding incompe- 
tency and brutal methods of such teachers as were to 
be had. There was he says, " so great a scarcity of 
masters of grammar that, so to speak, scarce one was 
to be seen in the country, and hardly could they be 
found in the great towns. He to whom my mother 
resolved to confide me had learned grammar in a 
rather advanced age, and was so much the less familiar 
with this science, as he had devoted himself to it at a 
later period; but what he wanted in knowledge, he 
made up for in virtue. My master, altogether un- 
skilful at reciting verses or composing them according 
to rule, almost every day loaded me with a shower of 
cufis and blows, to force me to know what he himself 
was unable to teach me." He speaks of being beaten 
until his arms were all black and the skin of his 
shoulders all raised up and swollen with the blows he 
had received ; yet such was his ardor for learning that 
when his mother would have interfered, and have had 
him desist from an effort attended with such barbar- 
ous treatment, he said to her " I would rather die than 
cease learning letters and wishing to be a priest." 

The most favorable thing that can be said of this 
barren period is that in it the germs of a taste for art 

* History of Civilization, vol. 3d, p. 94. 



CHIVALBT 95 

appear to have developed somewhat obscurely. Church 
music, in which the Gregorian tones had now been 
added to the original music of St. Ambrose, was cul- 
tivated with some success, and with a progress towards 
an art of music. Fine penmanship and the illumina- 
tion of manuscripts were considerably practised. 
Carving and painting, and the art of arts, architect- 
ure, were preparing the way for the artistic triumphs 
of succeeding ages. 

The first introduction of the Arabic figures into 
Christian Europe is assigned to this period, though 
they were little known and less used until some cen- 
turies later. This introduction is ascribed to Gerbert, 
then a teacher in the school at Rheims, but who in 
999 became Pope Sylvester II. It is doubtful whether 
some knowledge of them was not possessed by a few 
learned men at an earlier period, but it seems certain 
from Weissenborn's wearisomely learned treatise on the 
introduction into Europe of our present figures, that 
neither Gerbert nor those succeeding him for several 
generations had any knowledge of the use of the cipher, 
and hence that they were ignorant of the decimal 
notation.* 

1. Chiyalry 

But while, as we have just seen, the means of intel- 
lectual education during the 10th and 11th centuries, 
were sinking again into disuse, and the knowledge of 
the liberal arts was neglected and even despised, a new 
educational agency was rising into prominence, which 
having its obscure origin in early times and old Ger- 
manic customs, now manifested itself in an altered 

* See Weissenborn, Einfflhrung der Jetzigen Ziffern in Europa 



96 CHIVALRY 

and more brilliant form as an educative and civilizing 
force, in the effects which it produced on morals and 
manners. This agency was the institution of chiv- 
alry; an agency the more potent, because, growing 
out of the circumstances of the times and adapting 
itself to the modes of thinking and feeling of the age, 
it worked its way silently among men, and ere they 
were aware had wrought a great amelioration in the 
manners of a rude age. 

The liberal arts had thus far proved themselves an 
extrinsic agency, striving for influence among men by 
no means prepared by previous experience to receive 
them or to appreciate their benefits. This new educa- 
tional force, by appealing to motives to which men 
were at that time keenly alive, as well through the 
changes wrought by itself as by other influences which 
it brought in its train, prepared the minds of men for 
that period of eager intellectual activity which began 
with the 12th century, and made them in some degree 
receptive for that literary culture to which they had 
hitherto been averse. 

Hallam has said not more beautifully than truth- 
fully, " There are, if I may so say, three powerful 
spirits which have from time to time moved over the 
face of the waters, and given a predominant impulse 
to the moral sentiments and energies of mankind. 
These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of 
honor. It was the principal business of chivalry to 
animate and cherish the last of these three." 

In this time real liberty as a world spirit did not 
exist, for violence and disorder reigned; the strong 
trampled on the rights of the weak, and wrenched 



THE SPIEIT OF HOl^OE 97 

from each other what the mailed hand was not able to 
defend, and the idea of settled order under the sanc- 
tion of definite laws, without which there can be no 
individual liberty, had not yet been clearly appre- 
hended by men. 

The case was not much better with religion, the 
second of these great controlling spirits; for religion 
had largely become dogma — dogma too which was 
rather accepted than understood, embodied in an un- 
known tongue, and exercising too little influence on 
the lives of those who professed to believe it ; only too 
inoperative on the actions of those who taught it. 

But amongst the stronger class, the feudal lords, 
the feeling of personal importance, the germ of honor, 
was vigorously active. This spirit of honor the in- 
stitution of chivalry which now became prominent 
made its cardinal principle, and developed it ultimately 
to those extravagant and even fantastic forms to which, 
in a later age, the author of Don Quixote directed a 
well-merited ridicule. In the period that we are con- 
sidering, however, it was doubtless the best and most 
efiective school of moral discipline that the age afforded. 

If we read with attention the oaths of chivalry in 
their developed form, which may be found in Guizot's 
History of Civilization, Vol. 3, Lecture 6th, we shall 
find in them, exacted from the candidate for knight- 
hood, an observance of a code of moral and social 
virtues of which those times of lawless violence stood 
in the deepest need. We here see that, besides per- 
sonal courage, which was of the very essence of honor, 
what are most strongly emphasized as the vitally essen- 
tial characteristics of the chivalrous knight, are the 



98 CHIYALRY 

virtues of loyalty, courtesy, liberality, justice, and 
respect for women — loyalty whicli extended not merely 
to one's relatives, to friends, or to superiors, but which 
made one's word pledged either to friends or foes, a 
sacred obligation and stamped a breach of faith as in- 
famous; courtesy which powerfully ameliorated the 
forms of intercourse among rude men, and lent a tone 
of refinement even to hostile encounters; liberality 
which easily degenerated into extravagance and waste- 
fulness, but which nourished the feeling of honor by 
seeming to free valiant acts from any taint of avar- 
icious self-seeking; justice which bound the true 
knight, not only to upright dealing with all men, 
but to become the defender of the weak and helpless 
when oppressed by power; and a respect for women 
which expressed itself often in fantastic ways, and 
which degenerated too readily into licentious gallantry, 
but which elevated the best and purest of the female sex 
to an importance that had never before been accorded 
to them. 

It will readily be seen that by familiarizing men's 
minds with the ideas as estimable and desirable of such 
moral qualities as justice, loyalty, good faith, stead- 
fastness, and regard for the helpless, and of such social 
virtues as courtesy to equals and reverence for women 
and for superiors, chivalry was fitted to become an 
effective promoter of morals and civilization; and that 
although all these virtues were doubtless at first im- 
perfectly embodied in practice, they were likely still 
to have a powerful influence on the development of 
a higher type of general character. How many of us, 
it may be asked, even in this enlightened age, com- 



CASTLE SCHOOLS 99 

pletely exemplify in our lives the principles that we 
profess and even reverence ? Thus the virtues which 
chivalry exalted and on which it founded an order of 
personal nobility, even though incompletely practised, 
as from human frailty virtues are sure to be, slowly 
permeated mediaeval society; and, by softening rude 
manners and laying the foundations of order and of 
law, aided in preparing the minds of men for the re- 
ception of literary culture. 

To this also a strong re-enforcement was given by 
the springing up of chivalric poetry, which added its 
praises to chivalric virtues, and graced with the charms 
of verse the heroic deeds inspired by those virtues; 
and which thus, while extending the influence of 
chivalry, gradually turned the minds of men in the 
direction of literature. Men who had come to enjoy 
the lays of the Troubadours and Minnesingers, were 
more likely' to relish the poems of Homer and Virgil 
and Ovid. 

But chivalry needed schools in which its virtues 
should be inculcated, its exercises made familiar, and 
its special culture promoted — for it had a culture of 
its own. Such schools, the Castle schools, sprang up 
soon after the time of Charlemagne, taking their rise 
in the interior of castles as ''a spontaneous outgrowth 
of feudal manners." The sons of vassals were sent' 
to the castle of the Suzerain or great feudal lord to be 
brought up and trained in company with his sons; and 
thus, while being effective pledges for the loyalty of 
their fathers, they became familiar with the life of the 
castle, its principles, and its usages; they passed 

through all its grades of service as pages and esquires; 

L.ofC.t 



100 CHIYALRY 

and finally when deemed ripe were admitted to the 
ranks of knights at the hands of their lord. 

In this school were impressed by example and per- 
sistent practice those virtues which were considered 
essential to the character of the good and valiant 
knight. Here was imparted the special semi-literary 
culture of the castle, poetry and the art of verse- 
making, familiarity with heroic and sacred legends, 
skill in playing chess and in touching the lute, the art 
of carving skilfully at table, and the courteous man- 
ners which befitted the knightly dignity. The largest 
part in this castle education, however, was naturally 
devoted to perfecting the youths in all knightly exer- 
cises. Thus that physical education and that care 
for the body and its capabilities, which the ascetic 
spirit of earlier times had so neglected and contemned, 
and which it still continued to despise as unworthy of 
a spiritual being, the destined heir of immortality, 
was revived in the castle schools and never again fell 
into entire neglect. 

Karl Schmidt intimates a belief that the young can- 
didates for knighthood received also the elements of 
a scholastic education in the monasteries. This idea 
seems to me in a high degree impossible. If we recall 
to mind the account, given by Guibert de IS'ogent and 
already quoted (page 94) of the exceeding difficulty 
in finding any means of instruction encountered near 
the close of this period by a young noble who ardently 
desired learning, that he might become a priest, it will 
probably be conceded that there was little likely to be 
any culture of this kind among the mass of young 
men who were in training for a purely martial career 




INITIATION INTO THE ORDER OF KNIGHTHOOD. (From Cassell's 
History of England, i.l33) 



(101) 



DEVELOPMENT OF Ili^DIYIDUALITY 103 

and who lived in a society where learning was disre- 
garded if not contemned. We should also, in forming 
an opinion on this matter, take into account the pre- 
vailing lawlessness of this age, and the fact that dur- 
ing a considerable part of it all warlike and religious 
interests were absorbed in the crusades. With all this 
in view, it will be easy to admit that the humbler our 
estimate of the extension of literary learning among 
the nobility during the 10th and 11th centuries, the 
nearer it will be likely to accord with truth. 

We ought not to take leave of chivalric education 
and of the better and more civilized spirit which it was 
slowJy making influential among men, without empha- 
sizing a characteristic which has not yet been men- 
tioned, but in virtue of which it approximated, re- 
motely indeed yet obviously, to the Christian humani- 
tarian ideal. What I allude to is the fact that not 
only was the powerful world spirit which animated 
chivalry the spirit of honor, but it was the spirit of 
individual, of personal, of independent honor. Dur- 
ing the time of the crusades it gained its fullest ex- 
pression, in making of the knights an order of per- 
sonal nobility, whose rights and whose elevation were 
everywhere recognized. The knight went into battle 
or undertook perilous adventures with the proud con- 
sciousness that he was not an undistinguishable atom 
in a mass, but an important personality, whose deeds, 
if worthy, would be noted and mayhap sung, and 
would redound to the increase of the honor in which 
he was held. 

It seems not unnatural to fancy that this feeling of 
individuality, a relic of the old Germanic spirit of 



104 GEOWTH OF MUNICIPALITIES 

independence which Tacitus records, and which was 
pushed to an extreme in feudal society and in chivalry, 
was the natural reaction against the spirit of national- 
ism which had ruled the ancient world, and that it 
paved the way for the acceptance in much later times 
of the humanitarian ideal long latent in Christianity. 
Thus the excess of individuality neutralized the exces- 
sive spirit of nationalism, and prepared for the nobler 
ideal which should harmonize the two, being trans- 
formed into freedom and patriotism. 

2. Grrowth of Municipalities 

During the latter part of the period we are now 
considering, municipalities begin to emerge from the 
confusion, and to claim an increasing importance. In 
France, where they gained influence considerably earlier 
than in Germany, they had, according to Guizot, a 
threefold origin. In some cases they were the obscure 
survivals of old Roman municipalities. In others, like 
Orleans, they were cities which had been nourished 
and encouraged by the grant of special privileges and 
by freedom from arbitrary exactions, whether in con- 
sideration of money payments or through a more than 
usually wise policy of their feudal lords, who found 
their own importance increased and their needs sub- 
served by the existence within their domains of settled 
industries and a growing trade. The third class in- 
cluded towns whose citizens, wearied by the tyranny 
and robberies of their rude masters, had wrenched 
from them by force of arms certain chartered rights in 
virtue of which they managed their own internal 



TOWl^ SCHOOLS 105 

affairs, and stood ready to maintain their own interests 
by a military organization of their citizens. 

In all of these municipalities, with the attainment 
of a measure of security, industries began to spring up 
and trade to appear, both of which demanded some 
means of education for boys that they might be fitted 
to pursue with greater success the avocations of their 
fathers. Hence town schools began to appear, in 
which were taught such elements as reading, writing, 
simple reckoning, and in some cases a little geography. 
The teachers were undoubtedly clerics. 

The language that was used in these early town 
schools is said to have been the vernacular, as would 
seem necessary that they might subserve their purpose 
of supplying the pressing needs of trade and indus- 
tries. In England, however, in the 12th century, the 
schools of London used Latin as the vehicle of instruc- 
tion, and the boys seem to have been fitted for their 
business careers by engaging in hair-splitting disputes 
about ablatives and gerunds. In Germany also, the 
citizen schools which arose in the 12th and 13th cen- 
turies were Latin schools, to which were attached as 
preparatory schools- the so-called " writing schools ", 
genuine schools of the vernacular, in which were taught 
reading, writing, and reckoning as a preparation for 
trades. In the Latin school, Latin naturally reigned 
supreme, associated with religion, and the method 
of disputation, borrowed from the Scholastics, had a 
paramount place. Their privileges, however, such as 
they were, were open without cost to the poor as well 
as to the rich. These last named schools belonged to 
a somewhat later period than the 10th and 11th cen- 



106 THE SCHOLASTIC EENAISSAKCE 

turies, to which for the sake of clearness I have de- 
sired in this chapter to confine our attention.* It has 
however seemed most convenient to mention them here. 

The period to which attention has here been briefly 
directed, was apparently barren of interest from an 
educational point of view; and yet the two facts 
which we have just been considering, chivalry and the 
rise of municipalities, were amongst the most import- 
ant preparations for the extraordinary intellectual 
movement which the 12th century ushered in, and 
which we now come to describe. This movement was 
the Scholastic Renaissance, the second renaissance, if 
we account the revival of schools under Charlemagne 
and Alfred as the first, as I think we properly may. 

This Renaissance was characterized by a remark- 
able and wide-spread intellectual activity, which, be- 
ginning outside the ranks of the regular clergy, pres- 
ently swept them also into its vortex; and which, 
although it took a peculiar form and expended itself 
in seemingly barren efforts, was yet marked by an 
energy of intellectual life that was full of promise for 
the future, whenever better means of culture should 
be presented for its eager strivings. It was made es- 
pecially illustrious by the origin of many still famous 
universities, like those of Bologna, Oxford, and Cam- 
bridge, followed by such great German universities as 
Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg, and Leipsic at a some- 
what later date. 

Like all great historic movements, this intellectual 

*For the rise of municipalities, consult Hallara, Middle Ages, C. 2d part 
2d. The Italian municipalities, as we shall see, had interesting relations 
with the earliest universities, e, g.. Bologna. 



GUILDS 107 

revolution had its forerunners and efficient causes. 
Two of these have already been touched upon in con- 
sidering the period of barrenness which preceded. 
These were, first the rise of chivalry with the higher 
moral standard that it set up, the refinement of man- 
ners that it initiated by its principle of courtesy, and 
the germs of literary taste that were fostered by chiv- 
alric poetry; and seconcZ, the growth of municipalities 
endowed with chartered or conceded rights, busied 
with industries which tended to an ever-increasing 
diversification, and feeling the need for their success 
of a kind of civic knowledge quite unlike anything 
that was presented in the sparsely distributed schools 
that existed, whose chief aim was to subserve the faith 
and to train the clergy to perform the services of the 
church in the consecrated language of the church. 

To the internal polity of the municipalities, Profes- 
sor Laurie also ascribes an interesting influence exerted 
upon the inner organization of the universities, which 
were the nurseries and representatives of the 12th cen- 
tury Renaissance. This influence was due to the man- 
ner in which their powers and privileges were gained. 
From the disorders of the times in which no settled laws 
and no generally recognized supreme authority existed, 
the towns as they arose had been obliged as the very 
condition of their existence to assume certain powers 
of organization, internal direction, and control, with- 
out which no united life could have continued, and no 
individual could have pursued his vocation unhindered. 

These powers thus assumed and exercised with the 
general concurrence of the members of the communi- 
ties, soon grew into customs of the towns, and were 



108 THE CRUSADES 

essentially democratic in their character; in many 
cases this kind of internal organization extended itself 
to the various industries carried on within the towns. 
Thus grew up the Gruilds of the Middle Ages some of 
which still exist in the cities of Europe. These guild 
rights and powers, thus at first tacitly assumed from 
the necessities of the case, when they came to be no- 
ticed by the supreme authority had already grown into 
immemorial usuages, and were then regulated, con- 
firmed, or even extended by royal charters. 

To the example afforded by this guild organization, 
which had specially abundant instances in Italy, and 
to the mode in which it originated in the assumption 
of necessary powers of self-government. Professor 
Laurie in his " Rise and Constitution of Universities " 
with some probability refers the privileges and disci- 
pline of the earlier universities. 

3. The Crusades 

A third cause which was highly influential in rous- 
ing Europe from the intellectual torpor in which it 
had long been sunk, may be found in the Crusades, 
that offspring born of union of religious fanaticism 
with the chivalric love of adventure. These wonder- 
ful religious expeditions gave a new impulse to intel- 
lectual life in many ways. They broke up effectually 
and forever the isolation which had resulted from 
feudal manners, which had sundered not merely dis- 
tinct nationalities but also the various members of the 
same nationality, and which therefore prevented all 
that active movement of spirits, that lively curiosity, 
inquiry, and exchange of diverse experiences which 



COMPAKIOKSHIP OF NATIONS 109 

we behold where there is a free intermingling of 
peoples. 

This isolation, which had been one great cause of 
the darkness that brooded over Europe, the Crusades 
brought forever to an end. Princes and peasants, 
feudal nobles and burghers, from all the Christian 
nationalities of western Europe, were united in the 
bonds of a common enterprise and inspired by a com- 
mon purpose. For the first time in ages the various 
peoples of Europe and even men from neighborhoods 
not widely separated, really looked into each other's 
faces and saw each other as they were — recognized 
that kindred blood flowed in their veins and that they 
were animated by impulses kindled by a common faith. 

The barriers once broken down, there began an even 
freer commerce of ideas. Experiences gained under 
the most diverse circumstances and from the most 
various modes of life were actively compared in the 
companionship of arms; and a whole new world of 
ideas was opened and an intellectual quickening gained 
which was fraught with important consequences for 
the future of Europe. 

Nor did this intellectual impulse come only from 
the intermingling with their comrades. They trav- 
ersed wide realms before unknown to them. They 
saw the wonders of Byzantine architecture and art, 
and the splendor of that Saracenic culture which they 
had come to combat. Some dim sense, at least, of 
the vastness of the earth and its interests, of the 
worth of those sciences, of the art and poetry and 
philosophy of which they were ignorant, found access 
to their minds; and when they finally returned to 



110 SARACEliriC SCHOOLS 

their homes, they were no longer the same men who 
had set forth on their wild pilgrimage to the empty 
sepulchre of the risen Christ. New ideas and higher 
aspirations were awakened in many hearts ; new yearn- 
ings after a knowledge that might sweeten human life 
and render it better worth living stirred many a more 
generous spirit, not inclined to an ascetic waste of 
life ; and the disposition was aroused which prompted 
the youth of the laity to flock by the thousands from 
all parts of western Europe to any new centre of 
learning of whose existence the rumor was brought 
to their ears. 

What if, as G-ibbon alleges, a new swarm of legends 
and superstitions was brought back to Europe on the 
returning tide of the Crusades. The intellectual 
awakening which they had caused was richly worth 
any temporary corruption of the faith by imported 
superstitions to which ignorant credulity is always 
prone; it could indeed be trusted soon to correct 
effectually any corruption, and to cause wholesome 
modifications in faith itself; for to errors of opinion 
thought alone can bring a sure corrective: mental 
lethargy alone is hopeless of cure. 

4. The Saracenic Schools 

A fourth cause of the intellectual awakening of 
the 12th century may be found in an impulse proceed- 
ing from the great Saracenic schools of Spain and from 
the high grade of culture which there existed. Even 
in the 10th century these schools by their eminence had 
tempted some ambitious youth, like Gerbert, to brave 
the mysterious dangers that tales of necromancy and 



IJS"FLUEN^CE UPODS" EUROPE 111 

devil's lore had frightened ignorant Europe withal, 
that they might bring back something of value from 
these forbidden sources of learning. But after the 
first Crusades, the numbers who visited the Moham- 
medan schools evidently became greater — possibly 
encouraged by the advancement of Gerbert to the 
popedom — and a new and sharper stimulus to pro- 
gress was added to the impulse given to mind by the 
Crusades. The reality of the influence exerted at this 
time by the Saracens on neighboring Europe may be 
inferred with some probability from the scholastic 
direction which the intellectual activity in Europe at 
once took on, a direction which in this age prevailed 
in the Mohammedan schools of Spain. It was natural 
then as now that learners should copy the practice of 
their most influential teachers; and thus a highly 
stimulating method was added to the pedagogic re- 
sources of Europe.* 

To these four facts may be added as a circumstance 
which greatly facilitated the new intellectual movement 
and aided to make it general, the universal domination 
of the Catholic church and the universal acceptance of 
its consecrated language, the Latin, as a common me- 
dium of communication among the learned. 

By the universal sway which the church exercised 
over the minds of her faithful sons, travel was made 
easier and safer for the many thousand youths who, as 

* Kashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. I, pp. 35, 
gives as the cause of the special form of intellectual activity, i. e., the 
Scholastic form, the use of the favorite dialectic method, long familiar as 
part of the Trivium, on the Platonic metaphysical question of the nature of 
Universals, which was discussed with great fury because of its bearing on 
Theological dogmas, i. e., Trdnsubstantiation, and so brought Scholastic 
Theology to greater prominence than Scholastic Philosophy. 



112 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 

students under the protecting aegis of the church, 
desired to pursue their studies at distant seats of learn- 
ing; whilst, amid the multiplicity of languages and 
dialects that had now sprung up, the common language 
of the learned served as an accepted means of com- 
munication, as well in the schools as in the monaster- 
ies, which were the hostelries of travelling scholars. 



CHAPTEE V 

THE TWELFTH CENTUEY KEVIVAL OF LEARN^IN"G AND 
THE MEDIEVAL UlflYERSITIES 

The most interesting fact as well as the truest repre- 
sentative of that remarkable intellectual movement 
In Europe, which began in the 12th century, and 
whose inciting and favoring causes we have just ex- 
amined, was unquestionably the rise of the mediaeval 
universities. These not only constituted the most 
unique and permanent product of the movement, but 
in their method and subject-matter they also truly 
represented its spirit and its results. Hence they 
merit at our hands a somewhat careful examination, 
though our limits will permit little detail.* 

That the vigorous wakening of Europe from its 
long lethargy should have been followed, as a natural 
consequence, by the revival of old schools that had 
become dormant, and by the multiplication of new 
ones, would be precisely what we might look for; and 
this is doubtless the most wide-reaching form in which 
the movement of mind found expression; but the 

* Those specially interested in this subject will do well to read The Rise 
and Constitution of Universities by Prof. S. S. Laurie, and Compayre's Abe- 
lard, and to consult Denifle, Die Universitaten des Mittelalters; the first 
volume of Huber's English Universities, the first two chapters of Mullin- 
ger's The University of Cambridge, Lete's History of the University of Ox- 
ford, Vol, 4 of Von Raumer's Geschichte der Padagogik, translated in full 
in Barnard's Journal of Education, and the first portion of Paulsen's Ge- 
schichte des Gelehrten Unterrichts. Also Rashdell, Universities of Europe 
in the Middle Ages. 

(113) 



114 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 

reasons are not so obvious why it should have resulted 
in the springing up in many parts of Europe of those 
specialized high schools which we call universities — a 
type of schools of which Europe had had no examples 
for at least six centuries, save in the Saracenic schools 
of Spain. 

Professor Laurie assigns reasons for this fact which 
we may profitably examine. The first reason that he 
assigns is, *' that the growth of traditionary learning 
accumulated so great a weight on the subjects that 
most interest the mind of man and are most essential 
to his welfare as a member of society, as to demand 
specialization; " and that thus, when thought awak- 
ened and men became conscious of their spiritual and 
social needs, specialized schools, that is universities, 
arose by a kind of inner necessity. 

I do not wholly agree with the learned professor in 
the emphasis that he lays upon this as a cause of uni- 
versity origination; for as a matter of fact I doubt 
whether there was any such accumulation of tradi- 
tionary learning as he seems to assume, in at least two 
of the departments in which specialization earliest 
appeared, viz., medicine and jurisprudence. The 
former was indeed somewhat studied and practised in 
the monastics, but it was in the works of Galen and 
Hippocrates, to which nothing seems to have been 
added; any addition, in truth, would have run counter 
to the entire spirit of the times, which was wholly 
subservient to authority. The Saracens during the 
Middle Ages were famous for their skill in medicine 
which they derived from Grecian sources, and Gibbon 
credits them with the origination of the first special- 



CAUSES OF THEIR RISE 115 

ized school of medicine at Salernum in 1060 A. D. 
Laurie, who assigns the origin of this school to the 
same date, ascribes the first instruction given there to 
monks, and later to one Constantine, who had returned 
from the east stored with varied learning. In either 
case we have no indication of an accumulation of 
traditionary lore. 

The case is still weaker with jurisprudence, which 
during these ages had sunk into the greatest neglect, 
so that in those centuries when might was the chief 
source of right, the very tradition of the Roman civil 
law would seem to have been well-nigh lost, or at best 
to have been confined to a few obscure Italian schools. 
Yet it was in these two departments, in which we 
have little encouragement to look for an accumulation 
of traditionary learning, that special schools first made 
their appearance, for medicine at Salernum, and at 
Bologna for law. 

In theology however and in this alone, the case was 
different; for here there had indeed accumulated a 
vast body of ecclesiastical lore and ecclesiastical tradi- 
tion which stood in great need of being sifted by an 
age of rising intelligence; and it was sifted during 
succeeding times, with the result however rather of 
adding to its bulk, than of condensing by a just dis- 
crimination and t&us increasing its value. 

I am therefore inclined to think that the case might 
perhaps be more exactly stated in this form ; that as 
intelligence increased, and the state of society became 
more settled, and industries and trade assumed larger 
proportions, — life and its concomitant health were 
felt to be more valuable; and the need was realized 



116 THE MEDIiEYAL UNIVERSITIES 

for a more settled and systematic and complete system 
of laws than was then anywhere in force; and that 
hence ambitious young men were ready to flock eagerly 
to any centre of learning where it was reported that 
these desirable knowledges might be gained. As the- 
ology had long been nearly an exclusive object of at- 
tention, its rise to prominence under better teachers 
in a natural centre like Paris, hardly needs a theory 
for its explanation. 

The second fact to which Professor Laurie ascribes 
the rise of universities and the particular form that they 
early assumed, is doubtless to a limited extent valid; 
for we have good reason to believe that the growth of 
an anti-monastic feeling among the laity led to the 
pursuit of the great leading specialities in schools not 
under direct clerical domination. There can be little 
doubt that the returning crusaders brought back from 
the East, not only a new supply of legends and super- 
stitions, but also in not a few instances a skepticism, 
which degenerated sometimes into downright disbelief. 

Monasteries increased indeed and according to Hal- 
lam superstition took on its most monstrous forms, in 
the same century that witnessed the rise of universi- 
ties; but side by side with this fact, running parallel 
with it, and probably heightened by it, was the fact 
of the growth of a skeptical spirit which gave birth 
to a numerous brood of heresies, and held the monks 
and clergy in disrepute. It seems quite probable that 
it was from this latter class, inclined to skepticism and 
tinctured with latent dislike of monks and monastic 
restrictions, that the crowds who flocked to the incipi- 
ent universities were considerably recruited. This 



CAUSES OF THEIE KISE 117 

may at least plausibly account for their measurable 
freeaom from clerical control in times when all other 
schools were so controlled. Yet when we consider all the 
facts in the early growth of the universities, I am inclined 
to think that we may easily push this idea too far. 

We may admit Professor Laurie's third cause, viz., 
** the actual specializing of the leading studies," law, 
medicines, and theology, at certain centres where in- 
struction was open to all comers without monastic 
restrictions, with its tendency in the state of feeling 
which then existed to attract to such centres crowds 
of eager young men, " as the chief key to the explana- 
tion of the rise of the higher university schools ". It 
would be well, however, to look upon it merely as a 
starting point from which to date the origin of the 
university as such^ since without this limitation every 
special school of law, medicine, or theology might be 
regarded as an incipient university. 

Professor Laurie's idea of the constitution of the 
early universities seems, in the main, eminently clear, 
comprehensive, and satisfactory, accounting as it does 
for all the known prominent facts in their early his- 
tory. His idea may thus be briefly summarized: (1) 
they were specialized schools of some one or more of 
the great professional studies; (2) they were generally 
at the seats of pre-existing schools of the liberal arts 
which ultimately were absorbed into their organiza- 
tion; (3) they were open to all comers without distinc- 
tion of nationality; (4) they were free from direct 
clerical domination and especially at the outset from 
monastic restrictions, and (5) after the example of 
the existing guilds they assumed to themselves at first 



118 THE MEDIEVAL UKIVEKSITIES 

needful powers of self-government, direction, and 
protection, which at a later date were confirmed by 
ecclesiastical or royal authority. We shall be able 
more easily to give a brief yet reasonably clear ac- 
count of these remarkable institutions by following in 
their order the five parts of this description. 

With few exceptions they first appear as centres of 
instruction in some one of the three great professional 
specialties; as for example, Salemum in medicine, 
Bologna in civil law, Paris in theology, and Montpellier 
in both medicine and law. 

Though lectures in civil law were early given in 
Oxford, its real specialty was philosophy, with which 
theology was intimately connected; this was also true 
of Cambridge; and in later centuries the professional 
specialties never so prominently characterized these 
institutions as they did the continental universities. 
Their honorable distinction is that they have been best 
known as great schools for an advanced and non-pro- 
fessional culture. Yet no one would deny them the 
university name and rank. 

Hence it would not seem that the prominence of 
professional specialties was at all vital as a character- 
istic of universities save in later German opinions. 
In process of time the continental universities added 
other specialties to that with which they had begun, 
until finally most of them had the four faculties, arts, 
theology, medicine, and law; and by 1300 a univers- 
ity was considered incomplete that did not provide for 
instructing and graduating students in all these facul- 
ties.* On this basis, however, Paris, " the mother 

* Laurie, Rise and Constitution of Universities, p. 166. 



THEIE ORmiK 119 

of uniyersities '*, was incomplete, having no faculty 
of civil law. 

The origin of all the earliest universities is obscure, 
being lost in the mists of antiquity. Consider for 
example the universities of Bologna, of Paris, and of 
Oxford; it is impossible to assign any precise date 
when they may be said to have begun. The University 
of Bologna, in her recent invitation to the celebration 
of her eighth centennial, speaks of this uncertainty 
and fixes upon the date 1087 as the nearest approxi- 
mation. A like obscurity rests upon the origin of 
Paris, of Oxford, and of Cambridge. 

Much of this uncertainty arises from the fact that 
they were off-shoots or, in a limited sense, continua- 
tions of schools of the liberal arts that had long ex- 
isted. Thus Bologna was an off-shoot of such a school 
that was of unknown antiquity ; Paris grew out of a 
school connected with the cathedral of N^otre Dame 
that may possibly have originated in the impulse given 
by Charlemagne ; and Oxford is supposed by some, on 
very insufficient and even mythical grounds, to be the 
higher development of a school possibly as old as 
Alfred the Great. f 

From what has been said it will readily be under- 
stood that the earliest universities were not founded 
as later institutions of the kind were, by charters and 
grants conferred by popes or rulers ; they simply grew 
and in some cases had existed long and become famous 
before they received a formal governmental recogni- 

tSee Denifle, Die Universitaten, des Mittelalters, pp. 238-241. 

See also Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, etc., p 80, on the ob- 
scurity of the origin of Oxford and Cambridge; and Lyte, History of Ox- 
ford, C. IX. 



120 THE MEDIJEYAL UKIYERSITIES 

tion. The process of their formation was analogous 
to that by ^Vhich the ** Schools of Athens " grew out 
of the teachings of the sophists and philosophers. 
Some man of talent, learning, and enthusiasm for his 
subject, began to lecture at the seat of an existing 
school on his favorite specialty, using a new method 
suited to the needs of the age ; and by attracting to 
himself a swarm of eager learners, started a movement 
which ended in a famous university. 

Savigny in his '* History of the Eoman Law " gives 
this graphic account of the beginnings of these insti- 
tutions: " It would be wholly erroneous were we to 
consider the earliest universities of the Middle Ages 
as institutions of learning in our sense, i. e., as foun- 
dations in which a prince or a city had chiefly in view 
to provide instruction for the native population, the 
participation of strangers however being permitted. 
Such was not the case, but when a man inspired with 
an ardent love of teaching had gathered around him 
a multitude of scholars eager to learn, there easily 
sprung up a succession of teachers; the circle of 
hearers increased and thus a permanent school was 
established wholly by a kind of inner necessity."* 

Thus Irnerius at Bologna, by his instruction in civil 
law, and William of Champeaux or his pupil Abelard 
in Paris, by lectures on theology and philosophy, using 
the dialectic method which earlier from its theological 
implications had discredited Scotus Erigena, gave the 
impulse out of which grew great universities. The 

* Geschichte des Komischen Rechts in Mittelalter, Vol. 3, p. 154. This 
passage is quoted by Mullinger in his History of Cambridge University p. 72, 
as also by Laurie, Rise and Constitution of Universities, p. 168. 



EKORMOUS KUMBER OF STUDEKTS 121 

interest that attaches to the more ancient schools on 
which they grew, consists solely in the fact that 
sooner or later these schools became the faculty of 
arts, i. e., preparatory schools in the developed uni- 
versities. 

From the manner in which they originated and from 
the circumstances of the times, these incipient uni- 
versities were open to all comers, and soon ceasing to 
be local or even national, they became international. 

If we recall the condition of things that existed in 
Western Europe at this epoch, as already described 
(page 113), the movement of mind, the vividly awak- 
ened interest in a higher learning corresponding to the 
improving conditions of existence, and the greater 
facilities for intercourse now afforded; and add to all 
these facts, the small number of the men throughout 
Europe who were fitted to give any advanced special 
instruction, and that " oral instruction was almost the 
only path to comprehensive knowledge ", since cen- 
turies were yet to elapse before printing was invented 
to bring to one's very door whatever of value was any- 
where known — it will readily be understood why such 
prodigious numbers should have flocked to some of 
the more famous centres of learning from regions very 
widely separated. Thus we hear of 10,000 and 20,000 
at Bologna, and of 30,000 each at Paris and Oxford. 

Lyte however in his recent History of the Univers- 
ity of Oxford shows that this was a gross exaggeration 
of the numbers at Oxford, as it probably was for Paris 
and Bologna. To account for these great assemblages, 
we are told that great numbers of mere boys went to 
the universities for quite elementary training, inso- 



122 THE MEDI^YAL UNIYEBSTTIES 

much that Paris was obliged to refuse to receive lads 
under twelve years of age, a fact which suggests the 
paucity and the inferiority of local schools; also that 
the college servants, as well as the retainers of the 
richer students, were matriculated that they might 
enjoy the privileges and immunities of the university. 
Now although these students, drawn together from the 
most diverse nationalities by the fact that famous seats 
of learning were open freely to all comers, presumably 
had some facility in the use of Latin, still it was only 
natural that those who used the same native dialect 
should group themselves together, should occupy con- 
tiguous lodgings or even erect lodgings for themselves, 
should have in many respects a community of inter- 
ests, and should lead a common life. Hence arose 
the " nations " which make so great a figure in many 
of the mediaeval universities, and which would seem 
at times almost to have been thought an essential 
feature of a university. 

Thus Paris had four nations, and these had erected 
halls for their own accommodations long before the 
university had any place save a borrowed church in 
which to hold meetings of its regents. Bologna had 
two great groups of nations, the Cisalpine and Trans- 
alpine, each with many subdivisions, and these through 
their representatives exerted a controlling influence 
on university affairs, governing the teachers as well as 
the students. When two centuries later the first 
German universities were founded, the idea of nations 
as a feature of university organization still had such 
hold that they were provided for there also, though 
the membership was sure to be mostly local. 



THE *' NATIONS "; FREEDOM OF TEACHING 123 

Amongst these groups of students thus freely called 
together, there was naturally at the outset a freedom 
of studying when and what they pleased, untram- 
melled by any prescribed courses, wholly analogous 
to what we have seen in the universities of antiquity,* 
with the like concomitants of unobstrusive industry 
and obtrusive idleness, tumults, and disorders. 

Parallel with this perfect freedom of study was also 
a like freedom of teaching. At first, any man who 
felt that he had desirable knowledge which he wished 
to impart could hire a room and collect about himself 
a group of students; if his lectures proved acceptable 
his audiences might swell to great dimensions and 
give him a wide reputation. 

In the paragraph from which a quotation was given 
above, Savigny calls attention to an inconvenience in- 
herent in this freedom of teaching in universities, in- 
asmuch as *' Their special reputation depended in part 
on accidental, personal, changeable conditions. A few 
teachers of great talent could elevate a school, and 
under the unskilful hands of their immediate succes- 
sors it might again decline. For the universities stood 
quite alone, based upon themselves, without connection 
with a thorough national culture, and without the in- 
dispensable substratum of learned schools." 

A remedy for this inconvenience was found later, 
for when certificates of attainments came to be given 
they took the form of a " licencia docendi ", without 
which it is not likely that a man would be permitted 
to teach in a university. If however the institution 
granting the license had been recognized by the pope, 

* Williams's History of Ancient Education, page 135. • 



124 THE MEDI^YAL UNIVERSITIES 

it was valid throughout Christendom, and gave the 
licentiate liberty to teach wherever he could attract 
hearers. The licenses of Paris and Bologna naturally 
had the highest consideration. 

Thus I have considered as natural incidents of the 
fact that the universities were open to all comers, both 
the formation of the " nations ", and the freedom of 
teaching and of learning which early characterized 
them. 

The universities differed markedly from the Chris- 
tian schools that had existed in the preceding centuries, 
and from most of those in the centuries that followed, 
in their freedom from direct clerical control, and es- 
pecially in their freedom from monastic restrictions. 

The most famous schools that had existed hereto- 
fore had been in monasteries and had been subject to 
strict monastic rules; and though from the time of 
Charlemagne episcopal schools had assumed a relatively 
greater prominence, they were also under rigid clerical 
dominance, held in churches and taught by clerics, 
and mostly subserved mere ecclesiastical purposes. 
The new institutions had views much wider than the 
horizon of the church, views which embraced the ex- 
tending needs of a busy world, amongst which the 
needs of the church, though usually prominent, con- 
stituted but one of many. To accomplish these vari- 
ous purposes, the universities must be free from the 
domination of any single influence, aud the character- 
istic that is now under consideration sprang from the 
necessities of the situation, quite as much possibly as 
from any rising spirit of hostility to clerical control 
among the laity. 



NOT UNDEE CLERICAL CONTROL 125 

The teachers were doubtless largely of the clerical 
order; the students were mostly adherents of the 
church, at least in name, and many of them also 
clergy; but they exercised influence in university 
affairs not as clergy or as churchmen, but merely as 
members of the university. In Bologna indeed it has 
been said that no member of a monastic order could 
hold, the rectorship; yet after 1250 A. D. it seems 
probable that the rector must have been a clerical per- 
son, since he had jurisdiction over clerics. To the 
freedom of life which the lack of monastic restrictions 
permitted were doubtless due most of the disorders 
and riots which make so considerable a figure in early 
university history, and which, from the still rude 
manners of the times, as well as from the custom of 
carrying weapons, too frequently ended in bloodshed. 
Young men unused to freedom learned to use it by at 
first using it badly, a thing not unknown to modern 
times. 

The earliest universities, as we have seen, were not 
founded, but sprang up as a kind of spontaneous 
growth. As these voluntary assemblages increased in 
membership, they experienced the necessity of some 
internal organization, some settled order, some gener- 
ally recognized power, as well for the purposes of self- 
protection from rude and not always friendly surround- 
ings, as for the attainment of their scholarly aims. 
Hence we early find them exercising powers and enjoy- 
ing privileges needful for their purposes, making of 
themselves republics of letters in the midst of the 
cities where they were established, and even extending 
their authority over their members to many things 



126 THE MEDIiEYAL UNIVERSITIES 

which are usually matters of municipal jurisdiction. 
They had their own officers elected in various ways at 
different universities, with a rector at the head, their 
own statutes, and even their own judges and prison for 
the trial and punishment of offenders. 

These remarkable privileges have been plausibly 
ascribed to the assumption of powers in imitation of 
the guilds of trades, and especially those of travelling 
merchants, that then existed in southern and western 
Europe. It is evident however that such assumed 
powers would be in their very nature purely local and 
held on the precarious tenure of local toleration. 

The recent and exhaustive researches of Denifle * 
show that far too great emphasis has been laid on the 
idea of assumption of powers of internal organization 
and government. These assemblages of teachers and 
students evidently early felt the need of some more 
efficient and far-reaching means of protection than 
their own tacit agreements ; for by the middle of the 
12th century we see the Bolognese seeking and obtain- 
ing from the emperor the important privileges of secure 
residence while at the university, of choosing their 
tribunal in cases of accusation, and of safe-conduct in 
their journeys to and from the university city. 

Yet the student associations in Bologna, largely 
composed of mature men, were doubtless formed on 
the model of the Italian guild ; and their early resort 
to the emperor proves how precarious they found their 
assumption of privileges. The university of Paris 
likewise evidently had privileges granted by the French 
king in the 12th century, although no records of them 

*Die Universitaten des Mittelalters. 




AN OUTER MONASTIC SCHOOL. (From Cubberley's Syllabus, 
taken from Lacroix) 



(127) 



PRIYILEGES; ORGANIZATION 129 

exist earlier than 1200 A. D., since such privileges are 
assigned as reasons for the great frequentation of its 
schools, and since members of the schools defended 
them even by secessions as their ancient rights conferred 
by kings and popes. The associations of arts students 
and masters to form nations, which most resemble 
guilds, it may be remarked, seem not to have assumed 
any definite form in Paris till the 13th century, and 
they bear certain marks of having been not of spontan- 
eous but artificial formation. 

As concerns the internal organization of the univer- 
sities, it was evidently the result of a slow internal 
growth, the aggregation of masters teaching the same 
subjects gradually developing faculties, and these, by 
a certain concert of action, forming a university, to 
which was finally granted the power to use a seal in 
attestation of its acts. Paris certainly, according to 
the researches of Denifle, had no generally recognized 
head until the 14th century, when the rector of the 
nations finally became the head of the entire university 
but with powers by no means great. 

From all this it will be obvious that though the ex- 
ample of the guilds probably influenced to some extent 
the internal polity of Bologna and some other Italian 
universities of early date, this can hardly be true of 
Paris and the French universities fashioned after its 
model. The course of development naturally differed 
in different countries; and the numerous guilds exist- 
ing at that period in Bologna could hardly fail to have 
their influence on the thousands of young men who 
flocked to that centre of learning. To this should be 
added the fact that the Bolognese nations and their 



130 THE MEDIEVAL UKIYEKSITIES 

special privileges were limited to students who were 
not natives of Bologna. 

When collisions arose with the local authorities the 
very poverty of the universities was a source of strength. 
As for ages they had no buildings of their own, no 
apparatus and no equipment of their own save learned 
teachers who lectured in rooms hired for the purpose, 
they were naturally in light marching order; and they 
could easily coerce their opponents in the cities to 
whom their trade was very valuable, by the threat of 
removing elsewhere if they were seriously interfered 
with. This threat was often resorted to and usually 
with the desired effect, though more than once we read 
of serious secessions in cases of unreconciled disputes, 
whether with the local authorities or within their own 
body.* Indeed the danger of secessions was felt to be 
so great at Bologna that the municipality strove to 
bind the university to itself by requiring of the profes- 
sors an oath not to teach elsewhere. f 

Besides, as the universities grew strong in numbers 
and reputation, they naturally became greater objects 
of interest to popes and princes, who hastened to at- 
tach these rising powers to themselves by not only con- 
firming the privileges of autonomy and jurisdiction 
which had already been assumed or granted, but by giv- 
ing wider powers and range of influence, by granting 
sources of revenue, and by according protection to 
students and their property on journeys as well as in 
residence. The papal bulls also made their degrees, 

* See Lyte, History of the University of Oxford, pp. 41, 98, etc, for seces- 
sions and power of poverty. 

t Denifle, Die Universitaten des Mittelalters. 



STUDIUM GENERA.LE 131 

especially the valued licencia docendi, universally valid. 

It would carry us too far for our more general pur- 
pose, to go into the internal organization, means of 
discipline, privilege, and sources of revenue of these 
early institutions, although they have exerted a pro- 
found influence on all the more recent European uni- 
versities which have been founded since the beginning 
of the fourteenth century, among which are num- 
bered all the universities of Gemany. 

Such then were the prominent facts which character- 
ized the origin and constitution of these famous ancient 
schools. The names that were early applied to them 
were various, studium generate being the most usual. 
A few words will here be in place as to what was the 
essence of an university according to mediaBval ideas. 
Karl Schmidt says it was *' the united sciences ", that 
is, the great professional branches, theology, medicine, 
and jurisprudence ; he however admits that the term 
studium generale, i. e., university, did not necessarily 
point to a totality of these sciences, and calls attention 
to the fact that these schools were open to all comers. 

Karl von Raumer suggests that the name may have 
signified the general acceptance of their degrees, and 
especially the valued licencia docendi. He says, " It was 
this authorization especially, which, according to the 
earlier view, the pope alone could give because he 
stood at the head of all Christendom. From this may 
also originate the name studium generate, not because 
the institution comprehended all the four faculties, 
but because the graduates of a university authorized 
by the pope were recognized as such by all the Chris- 



132 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 

tian universities of Europe, and had the right to teach 
anywhere." 

Professor Laurie feels quite sure that studium generate 
meant a higher, specialized, and self-governing school, 
open to all the world, free from monastic restrictions 
or canonical rule, and endowed with certain privileges, 
among which was included the right of promotion, that 
is, of granting degrees. 

As the last definition contains whatever is of much 
significance in both the others, we may safely accept 
it as fairly descriptive, though it is quite possible that 
it contains more than the idea originally included. 
According to Denifl6, pp. 1-29, the term seems origin- 
ally to have emphasized the fact that certain institu- 
tions were open to all who desired to study, to which 
the idea of privileges came soon to be added. 

We may the more willingly accept Laurie's defini- 
tion of a mediaeval university, with which that of 
Denifl6 substantially coincides, because von Kaumer's 
would postpone the real origin of universities to the 
date of papal recognition, when in point of fact they 
had, in several instances, existed and exercised their 
privileges long before, besides which at least five were 
founded by imperial authorization, without any papal 
confirmation; while Schmidt's conception would ex- 
clude from the list of universities institutions which 
did not give prominence to professional specialties. 

The antiquity of some of the best-known of the 
mediaeval universities, is a matter of no small interest. 
In 1400 A. D. 44 universities were already in existence, 
of which 10 or 12 were earlier than 1300 A. D. 
Bologna was a noted school of law, probably before 



STUDIUM GEKERALE 133 

the close of the 11th century. Its late centennial was 
celebrated as from 1087 A. D. The University of 
Paris existed as early as the beginning of the 12th 
century, privileges were confirmed to it by both king 
and pope before 1180 A. D., and degrees were con- 
ferred before the century closed. Montpellier was a 
famous school of medicine in 1137, in 1181 it was 
declared to be open to all comers in full freedom, and 
its first statutes date from 1220 A. D. Oxford existed 
as an institution in which were taught philosophy, 
theology, and civil law, as early as 1150 A. D. ; was 
expressly mentioned in 1201 A. D. as a university 
with several thousand students ; and in the 13th cen- 
tury was blamed by Koger Bacon for the preponder- 
ance there given to the study of civil law. These 
few well-known universities, which by no means ex- 
haust the list, will suffice to show the antiquity of 
some mediaeval universities. 

The earliest German universities were all founded 
by spiritual or temporal authorities^ and hence the 
dates of their origin are not uncertain. Those of some 
of the earlier and best known, omitting Cologne and 
Erfurt which no longer exist, are as follows : Prague 
1348, Vienna 1365, Heidelberg 1386, and Leipsic 1409, 
largely by a secession from Prague. The University of 
Berlin, as is generally known, though now one of the 
largest and most famous of them all, is a comparatively 
modern creation, having been founded in 1809. 



CHAPTER VI 

STUDIES, METHODS, AKD DISCIPLINE OF THE MEDIEVAL 

UN"IYEESITIES 

We have now seen that the early universities grew 
from obscure beginnings, assuming powers needful for 
self-government which later were confirmed and even 
extended as rights by princes and popes ; that amongst 
these rights was the right of self-government and of 
jurisdiction over their own members, even in cases of 
crime ; that they soon acquired the rights of prescrib- 
ing studies and of conferring degrees which were of 
universal validity, and that security for persons and 
property of students and for their servants was guar- 
anteed to them in journeys to and from as well as 
within the university precincts. To this may be 
added that they often received legacies and also grants 
from popes and princes of sources of revenue, that 
usually they were freed from taxes and other munici- 
pal burdens, and that those early established became 
models that were imitated in the organization of those 
founded later. 

We have now to examine what use they made of 
these extraordinary privileges, i. e., (1) what was the 
nature of the subjects taught in them ; (2) what mode 
of teaching and learning they pursued ; (3) what was 
their discipline and what the state of morals that pre- 
vailed; (4) what indirect effects aside from studies 

(134) 



SUBJECTS 135 

pursued the universities produced on education and 
civilization ; and (5) the profound changes wrought in 
them by the invention of printing and by the revival 
of classical learning, and their early attitude towards 
the latter. We shall be fully warranted in this exami- 
nation, not only by the circumstance that the uni- 
versities and their teachings are by far the most im- 
portant and influential facts in the history of educa- 
tion during the four centuries which preceded 1500 A. 
D., but also because their studies and methods vitally 
affected all instruction given elsewhere. 

The subjects pursued in the mediaeval universities 
divide themselves into two great groups, viz., the arts, 
which were the culture studies with no special profes- 
sional bearing, and the sciences, which comprised the 
three professional branches, theology, jurisprudence, 
and medicine, regarded by most investigators as con- 
stituting the distinctive notes of an university. 

The arts, or culture studies, were the seven liberal 
arts of the Middle Ages, the Trivium and Quadrivium 
that have so often been mentioned, and with much the 
same extension of meaning for some of the subjects 
that have been described in preceding pages. It is 
well to observe, however, that grammar, in which 
formal grammar was emphasized, hardly included any- 
thing that could be called literature, the authors of 
classical antiquity that had retained some feeble hold 
on the monastic schools of the preceding period being 
now neglected;* and that dialectics, or the art of^dis- 

* Denifle, Die Universitaten des Mittelalters, p. 758 and note; also Kash- 
dall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. 1, pp. 65-72 for the 
school of Chartres and its use of classics, with the causes that Scholasticism 
then overwhelmed Humanism. 



136 THE MEDIEVAL UliflVERSITIES 

putation, was the preponderating subject, with the 
works of Aristotle on dialecties and ethics, that had 
then been translated in an imperfect form, as the su- 
preme authorities. 

The student in arts received first the degree of 
bachelor and some years later that of master, the two 
degrees requiring at Oxford about seven years. It 
needs hardly to be said that the instruction in arts, as 
well as in the sciences now to be mentioned, was given 
entirely in Latin. If for no other reason, this would 
have been imperative with students coming from many 
different countries and speaking many different dia- 
lects; though it is 'probable that students, as a rule, 
attached themselves to masters who were their coun- 
trymen. 

Since the arts studies were the usual preparation for 
the professional branches, this art faculty was counted 
in Oxford and Paris as inferior in rank.* The num- 
bers in arts naturally exceeded those in all the higher 
faculties combined. 

Of the sciences, theology with its handmaid philoso- 
phy was usually considered chief. This required of 
the student, already a master of arts, seven or eight 
years of study and the acquisition of skill in disputing 
and preaching. Its sole studies seem to have been the 
Bible, and the four books of " Sentences " of Peter the 
Lombard, a famous doctor in Paris in the 12th century, 
whose *' Sentences " were long the authoritative text- 
book of Theology. To these the " Summa " of Thomas 
Aquinas, a 13th century theologian, was in some cases 
added. When the candidate for the master's degree 

* Denifle, p. 98, and Lyte Op. cit. p. 53. 




LECTURE ON CIVIL LAW BY GUILLAUME HENEDICTL (After 

a 16th century woocl-engravino' in the National library, 

Paris, reproduced in Cubberley's Syllabus) 



(138) 



theology; law 139 

had mastered the Bible and the Sentences, ** he must 
still practise himself three years at the university in 
disputing and preaching, and must also be present at 
disputations."* The course was evidently a long one, 
but from the modern point of view its length was more 
than equalled by its dry formality and its emptiness. 

In civil and common law, the subjects were the com- 
pilations and collections of the Eoman law that had 
been handed down from the time of Justinian, and the 
papal Decretals, with comments and expositions there- 
upon from the doctors, and with abundant disputa- 
tion, in a course of eight or even ten years, after which 
and the passing of examinations, in which disputation 
played a large part, the student became a licentiate 
and doctor utriusque legis. Eoger Bacon complains that 
in his day, civil law had too great attention in the Eng- 
lish universities. 

The professional education in medicine consisted of 
a preliminary course of two or three years in an ele- 
mentary work, some book on practice, and certain parts 
of the medical writings of Avicenna. a celebrated 
Arabian writer on medicine and philosophy of the 10th 
and 11th century who had made a more than usually 
systematic statement of Greek medical ideas, and 
whose works had been translated into Latin. This pre- 
liminary course, which admitted to the baccalaureate, 
was followed by five or six years study, chiefly of 
Galen and Hippocrates, preparatory to the doctorate. 

Thus the medical course was of seven or nine years, 

* See von Raumer, Gesch. der Pad. Vol. IV, p. 20, etc. For the require- 
ments in sciences in England see Mullinger, The University of Cambridge 
from the Earliest Time, pp. 363-5; also Lyte, History of the University of 
Oxford, p. 219-223 for all the faculties including theology. 



140 THE MEDI^YAL UFIVEKSITIES 

according as the student was or was not a graduate in 
arts. In Cambridge the student must be a master in 
arts, and must have attended lectures on prescribed 
authors at least five years, and have had two years 
practice for the doctorate. Disputations were also 
obligatory even here, but clinics and anatomical demon- 
strations are not mentioned, unless they are included 
in English universities under the term '* in practica ". 
In the 12th and 13th centuries, the University of 
Montpellier had an overshadowing reputation as a 
school of medicine. 

Possibly this summary of mediaeval professional stu- 
dies may justify the dissent that has been expressed 
from the opinion that the weight of traditional learn- 
ing in the several sciences had of itself forced special- 
ization. The surprise that will doubtless be caused 
by a comparison of length of the courses with the 
brevity of the subject-matter, will be lessened when 
we observe the method of teaching and learning which 
then prevailed, which in a great measure was made 
necessary by circumstances, and which in itself was a 
controlling cause of specialization, since a single life 
would hardly sufifice for more than one specialty. 

(2) We must at the outset, in justice to these an- 
cient nurseries of learning, recall to mind the fact that 
printing had not yet been invented, and that in con- 
sequence books of every kind were scarce and very 
dear, since they could be multiplied only by the tedious 
process of transcribing. Likewise works of literary 
merit were so little known that the famous library of 
Paris in 1300 A. D. had copies only of Cicero, Ovid, 
Boethius, and Lucan. Near the close of the 15th cen- 



METHOD OF TEACHIN^G 141 

tury, the library of the Medici in Florence had less 
than 1,000 manuscripts, and the Vatican library only 
about 5,000, nearly all collected with vast labor and 
expense after a new spirit had begun to agitate the 
turbid depths of mediaeval ideas. Moreover, the human 
intellect, though now aroused to a remarkable activity, 
was still far from emancipating itself from the habit of 
a servile deference to authority in science as well as in 
religion. 

From these causes, the methods of instruction that 
came to be devised were dictation from manuscripts of 
prescribed subject matter which students were to copy 
and memorize, and dialectic disputations on these by 
students and teachers as a mental gymnastic, to which 
was added a third expedient soon to be mentioned. 
With regard to the first, we may quote a lively descrip- 
tive paragraph from Karl Schmidt,* which, though 
more exactly applicable to the last two centuries of 
the Middle Ages, when some degeneracy had possibly 
crept into the teaching of the universities, may yet by 
the subtraction of a little coloring be considered fairly 
descriptive of the dictation method in general. 

** According to the expression then in vogue, the 
professor read a book and the student listened to a 
book. To lessen labor they hit upon the idea of pre- 
senting abstracts, the so-called summaries {summeri)^ 
which soon entirely supplanted the original works. 
Into the narrow frame of the explanation of these few 
books must be crowded everything worth knowing, an 
artificial process which led to all sorts of subtleties and 
strange interpretations. Hence it may have been advis- 

* Geschiohte der Padagogik. Vol, II, pp. 366-7. 



142 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 

able to demand dictation. Therefore the statutes of 
the university of Vienna required of every reader 
* that he should dictate honestly and exactly, slowly 
and distinctly, so indicating the paragraphs, capitals, 
commas, etc., as the sense demands, as to lighten the 
labor of copying. ' In this dictation the students vs^ere 
often miserably swindled. The dishonest master made 
use of unknown writings containing many errors, or of 
pretended works of honored masters in order to attract 
more copyists, and also dictated recently-penned books 
of foreign scholars. The students were not to be out- 
done in tricks. In Italy many young men made use 
of the dictated manuscripts of others, studied at home, 
and so saved the fees; the nobles sent their servants 
into the college to copy; and there was yet lacking 
only that the dictating teachers should likewise send 
their servants to the reading desk." 

In all this it will be seen that there is no thought on 
the side of the professors of presenting the results of 
original research or independent thought. All is ex- 
position based on authority, and the older the authority 
the better. It was rank heresy or presumption, for 
example, to question the authority of Aristotle; and it 
is related of an old professor that when a student called 
his attention to the rumor that spots had been seen on 
the sun, he replied, " There can be no spots for I have 
read Aristotle twice from beginning to end, and he 
says the sun is incorruptible; " so, with an injunction 
to wipe his glasses that he might see more clearly, the 
doubting student was dismissed. 

For the students, on the other hand, there is no place 
for the use of reason ; they are merely to copy what 



DISPUTATIONS' 143 

is given and to cram it up for a distant examination 
or for use as indisputable arguments in future verbal 
conflicts. Such was the dictation method that was in 
vogue in the mediaeval universities, its essence author- 
ity and receptivity. 

In the correlative disputation, on the other hand, 
there was real movement of mind, but it was move- 
ment in no determined direction, stir without change 
of place, to mark time but not to advance. These 
disputations, which were shared by both teachers and 
students, might have been a useful expedient in the 
lack of books for bringing to notice new ideas that had 
been originated by any one, thus serving as a medium 
of publication; or for defending received opinions 
against unwarranted novelties; or for impressing 
strongly what had been learned, by its use in lively 
discussion; but they soon degenerated into hair-split- 
ting distinctions, into verbal duels in which the princi- 
pal fought for victory rather than truth, and " made 
a merit of being able to prove the most opposite things 
with equal facility " from the same premises, or " of 
disputing several successive days about nothing with 
the greatest dialectic skill ". 

Empty though they were, these verbal battles, we 
are told, were waged with such vigor and heat that it 
was found necessary to separate the contestants by 
barriers to prevent them from coming to blows. Yet 
however much they may have fostered intellectual 
acuteness and mental dexterity, as they doubtless did, 
they were very far from encouraging freedom of 
thought; for though the disputants might explain away 
and thus minimize the force of received ideas, or might 



144 THE MEDIEVAL UN^IVERSITIES 

question their application to the case in hand, they 
might not cast doubt upon their authority in general. 

Hence resulted, in the words of von Raumer, " that 
dialectics, not merely in the philosophic faculty, but in 
all faculties of all universities, ruled so overmasteringly 
that everywhere the interest in the essential import, 
the essential truth, and the essential cultivation of the 
scientific subjects that were taught, sunk out of sight, 
and men were completely satisfied with a mere formal 
dialectical truth."* 

Such then was the scholastic method, a subtle use of 
the machinery of formal logic, which, at first applied 
to the philosophic questions of theology in attempts 
to support the doctrines of the church and to reconcile 
dogma with reason, spread soon to all the subjects of 
the university, and infected the methods of all classes 
of schools during the later centuries of the Middle 
Ages. 

Thus we read of the three chief schools of London 
later in the 12th century: ** When the feast of the 
patron saint is solemnized, the masters convene their 
scholars. The youth on that occasion dispute, some in 
the demonstrative way, and some logically. These 
produce their enthymemes and those the more perfect 
syllogisms. Some, the better to show their parts, are 
exercised in disputation contending with one another, 
whilst others are put upon establishing some truth by 
way of illustration. Some sophists endeavor to apply 
on feigned topics a vast heap and flow of words, others 
to impose upon you with false conclusions * * * 
The boys of different schools wrangle with one another 

* Gesohichte der Padagogik, Vol. IV, p. 27. 



DISPUTATIONS 145 

in yerse, contending about the principles of grammar 
or the rules of the perfect tenses and supines."* 

This quotation has been introduced as well to illus- 
trate the scholastic method, as to show how quickly 
the scholastic spirit had invaded the lower schools in 
those times. Based on unquestioned authority, and 
with no resort to individual experience or personal ob- 
servation, using mere formal processes for merely 
formal ends, and barren of all results in the advance- 
ment of the sciences it nominally cultivated, the best 
thing that can be said of it from our point of view is, 
that by unsettling men's convictions as to what is 
truth, or whether there is any truth other than a mere 
formal logical truth, it led finally to a doubt of author- 
ity, produced men like William of Occam, tended to 
the spread of heresies which now began to spring up, 
and finally opened the way to the genuine spirit of in- 
quiry which marked the great Kenaissance of the 15th 
and 16th centuries. 

^^ Yet when we consider the circumstances of that 
age, the means of culture then available, and the 
nature of the questions that then profoundly exercised 
the newly-awakened intellectual activity of men, our 
opinion of the scholastic methods is likely to be con- 
siderably modified. It is not wholly sure that they 
were not well adapted for the times in which they 
prevailed: indeed the natural presumption would be 
quite the contrary. It is certain that in that age they 
were universally esteemed the fittest preparation for 
the conditions of life that then prevailed; and hence 

* Education in Early England, p. 54, in publications of Early English 
Texts Soc. 



146 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 

if we find in them little or nothing that would be 
valuable to us, it would not be quite just for us, meas- 
uring them by our standards, to condemn them as 
absurd. It is not wholly sure that future ages may 
not visit a like judgment on some of our favorite means. 

In this regard the words of Mullinger are worthy 
of our consideration.* 

" Their earnestness and devotion invest with a certain 
dignity even their obscure and errant metaphysics, 
their interminable logic, their artificial theology, and 
their purely hypothetical science; and if we reflect 
that it is far from improbable that in some future era 
the studies now predominant at Oxford and Cambridge 
may seem for the greater part as much examples of 
misplaced energy as those to which we look back with 
such pitying contempt, we shall perhaps arrive at the 
conclusion that the centuries bring us no nearer to 
absolute truth, and that it is pursuit rather than the 
prize, the subjective discipline rather than the object- 
ive gain, which gives to all culture its chief meaning 
and worth." 

A third expedient for assuming the mastery of the 
subjects taught remains to be mentioned, and it was 
wholly admirable. In all the facilities of at least some 
of the universities, the bachelors were required to 
alternate their higher work by lecturing to those less 
advanced on books that they had themselves. They 
learned by teaching; and as Mullinger remarks, " the 
duties of the lecture-room and the disputations of the 
schools enabled all to test their powers and weigh their 
chances of practical success long before the period of 

*The History of Cambridge from the Earliest Times, p. 136, Vol. 1. 




INTERIOR OF A NORMAN SCHOOL, 12th CENTURY. (From Cubberley's 

Syllabus, after a cut in Wright's Homes of Other Days. The teacher 

ou the right is lecturing, with two writers on the left.) 



(147) 



INGEPTIOK 149 

preparation had expired." The admission of the 
bachelor to the right and duty to give certain lectures 
and to preside over disputations was called inception 
or commencing, since he was now to begin to teach as 
well as to learn. 

For the master, inception was a very imposing cere- 
mony, ending with his receiving the insignia of his 
rank, being saluted as noster magister, and being em- 
powered to teach in any university. In some univer- 
sities, if not in all, the master was required, if called 
on, to give ordinary lectures in his alma mater for at 
least a year; thus the right of teaching was also a 
duty which might be imposed. It is hardly necessary 
to remark that inception is the origin of our modern 
commencement, though the significance that com- 
mencing conveyed to a mediaeval student has been 
greatly modified in later times. 

Both Lyte and Mullinger speak of the heavy cost of 
*' inception ", and of taking any of the higher degrees. 
The former says p. 225: ** The cost of taking a degree 
in theology, or indeed in any of the superior faculties, 
was very heavy. Members of the religious orders, 
having no private property, were therefore unable to 
become doctors without the aid of a grant from their 
brethren assembled in chapter. In 1400, the convent 
of Christ Church, Canterbury, paid no less than £118 
3s. 8d. for the inception of two Benedictine monks, 
in theology and in canon law respectively. The 
money was spent, partly, in the entertainment of the 
regent masters, and other members of the university." 
When it is considered that at this time the purchase 
power of money was at least twelve times as great as 



150 THE MEDIEVAL UKIVEESITIES 

at present, and that sons of wealthy families could be 
respectably maintained at Oxford for not more than 
£10 per year, it will be apparent how grossly exorbi- 
tant were such expenses. 

(3) In giving an account of the condition of morals 
in the early universities, von Eaumer judiciously re- 
minds us by an apt quotation, that while the evil deeds 
of the vicious and reckless make a prominent figure in 
the records of the times, from being the subjects of 
warnings and punishments, the quiet virtues of the 
well-ordered and studious majority who grow up to be 
the pride and ornament of their age are unrecorded, 
and so are likely to be left out of the account when we 
make up our estimate of the general character of these 
ancient institutions. With this caution he cites for us 
those pages in the statues of the universities of Paris 
and Vienna, taken as typical, which concern the mor- 
als of students and professors, remembering that what 
is prohibited has quite probably occurred in the uni- 
versities.* 

In Paris such vices are denounced as thieving, house- 
breaking, abduction of girls, and assassination, besides 
some crimes too shameful to admit of mention. A 
papal bull of 1276 denounces excommunication against 
those Paris students who were guilty of various forms 
of sacrilege. 

The statutes of Vienna are not aimed at such glar- 
ing crimes as are those of Paris, a fact which possibly 
bespeaks some amelioration of manners during the 
centuries which elapsed between the rise of the Uni- 

* Geschichte der Padagogik, Vol. IV, p. 23. Barnard's Journal of Edu- 
cation, vi. 10; vii. 47, 80, 200. 



MORALS 151 

versity of Paris and the foundation of that of Vienna; 
still theological students in Vienna are warned not to be 
drunkards and debauchees; students of law are en- 
joined to be quiet at lectures, not to shout, yell and 
hiss, and to avoid the company of infamous persons, 
brawlers and gamblers; and the students in general 
are naively bidden '* not to spend more time in tippling 
places, in fights, and in guitar-playing than they de- 
vote to physics, logic, and college studies." Expul- 
sion is denounced against such students as after warn- 
ing are guilty of drunkenness, thieving, gambling, 
insulting citizens, and making night hideous with 
student songs, and especially against such as break 
in doors. 

Evidently therefore the state of morals and manners 
among the uneasy spirits in these old universities was 
not an ideal one, not better than that of the ages in 
which such offences occurred. I do not mention such 
ordinary matters as riotous collisions between '' town 
and gown ", which, from the common practice of carry- 
ing weapons, frequently ended in bloodshed. 

In Paris and Oxford where many of the students 
were still very young, the collection of the students, 
which was somewhat early begun, into halls and en- 
dowed colleges where they lived under some oversight, 
did much to correct some of the worst disorders. In 
imitation of Paris, some of the older German universi- 
ties established what were called Burses, or authorized 
lodging houses, where the students were placed under 
the charge of a rector who was to exercise a strict 
oversight over them and to aid them in their studies. 
But the rectors, to entice students to their houses, 



152 - THE MEDIAEVAL UKIVEBSITIES 

winked at their vices or even shared them, retailed beer 
to them at a large profit, and grew rich by the neglect 
of their duties.* These Burses, having no endow- 
ments, have long since disappeared, leaving no trace 
of their former existence save the term Bursche ap- 
plied to university students. Not so the endowed 
colleges of Paris and the English universities, which 
came in time to overshadow the universities of which 
they were members. 

In Paris we are told that besides the punishments 
inflicted by the university in its municipal capacity, 
flogging was commonly resorted to even so late as the 
15th century, bachelors as well as under-graduates in 
arts being thrashed for their offences. 

It is interesting to note in this connection that in 
Bologna, where the students were older and were 
themselves the governing body, a much better condi- 
tion of morals and manners seems to have prevailed. 

Yet coarse and even shocking as much that is re- 
ported seems to our modern idea, it is quite probable 
that as a whole it stands in much the same relation to 
the general tone and standard of life and conduct of 
the period in which it was true of the universities, as 
student pranks in other ages stand to the morals and 
manners of their times. It always has been true and 
possibly always will be true, that young fellows just 
released from home restraints and enjoying their first 
taste of complete freedom and self -direction, have dis- 
played a certain amount of exuberance and extrava- 
gance of spirit, extravagance because it overleaps to 
some extent the general standard of conduct of the 

*von Kaumer, Op. cit., Vol. IV., p. 26. 



AS AIS" EDUCATIVE AGEITCY 153 

age, but always doubtless has reference to it even 
while transgressing it. 

If therefore the conduct of mediaeval students seems 
to us coarse and rude even to the point of repulsive- 
ness, it was because the times were still marked by 
the same characteristics though in a somewhat less 
degree. If the college-boy of to-day no longer carries 
weapons, nor engages in bloody broils, nor breaks 
into houses, nor thieves nor gambles nor abducts, 
this fact is due not so much to any change in youthful 
human nature, as to the enormous advances in civiliz- 
ation and refinement which the latest centuries have 
brought in their train. 

(4) Besides their direct and intended influence in 
promoting a certain style of learning which probably 
was suited to the times and made use of the best 
means that were then available, and which thus by its 
conformity to the state and means of culture did much 
to prepare for a better future culture, the universities 
indirectly and without conscious intention did import- 
ant services as a civilizing and educative agency. Let 
us here briefly indicate some of these incidental 
services. 

(a) They brought young men from widely distant 
countries, marked by the greatest diversities in modes 
of living and thinking, into the most intimate rela- 
tions, at an age in which the most vivid of lasting im- 
pressions are made. From this association they not 
only gained some ideas of European geography and 
history which were then but very little known, but 
also by their intercourse wore away much of their 
provincialism of manners and feeling; they came to 



154 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 

recognize with the ready instinct of youth the points 
of superiority, each of the other; and thus what ever 
of strength and refinement then existed anywhere 
came to be blended into a European type of character. 
This was ultimately borne by every student to his own 
home, where he became a centre of influence to his 
fellows. 

The importance of this fact can hardly be overesti- 
mated; nor can that of a fact closely allied to it, viz., 
the counteraction that the freedom of travel and the 
protection guaranteed to students and their servants 
wrought against what still survived of the isolating 
spirit of feudalism. With the guarantee of safety of 
travel to those who were in that age the most efficient 
agents for the spread of whatever civilizing ideas then 
existed, it cannot be doubted that the most harmful 
feature of feudalism, its isolating tendency, already 
undermined by the Crusades, was doomed to speedy 
extinction. 

(6) The universities taught the lesson, greatly 
needed in that rude age, of the supremacy of human 
reason over mere brute force. In this they became 
the efficient coadjutors of the church, which had long 
been the sole power that enforced respect without 
resort to armed violence. 

The spiritual power of the church, however, was 
reinforced by supernatural and superstitious terrors. 
This new power had no such adventitious aids. It 
gained its influence ^by the mere superiority which 
trained intellect has over brute force, through sagacity, 
through foresight, through command of resources in 
unlooked for exigencies. By such qualities the nurse- 



EFFECT UPOliJ" THE LOWEE SCHOOLS 155 

lings of the universities, trained though they were 
under an imperfect system, yet trained, gradually at- 
tained a supremacy which supplanted the reign of 
violence and gave a vast impulse to European civili- 
zation. 

(c) Furthermore the universities promoted and shaped 
general education through that pervasive influence 
which higher centres of learning inevitably exert upon 
all lower schools. For they not only furnished teach- 
ers for such schools and supplied them with their in- 
tellectual equipment, but also by reason of whatever 
standard of attainment they set up, they directed the 
minds of both teachers and pupils to the mark which 
they should strive to reach. Thus we have seen al- 
ready how soon the scholastic methods of the universi- 
ties had made their way into the schools of London, 
so that the sons of teachers and craftsmen strove to 
fit themselves for the probable pursuit of their fath- 
ers' callings by gaining dexterity in subtle argumenta- 
tion. To this may be added that the requirements for 
entering on university work made it necessary that 
whatever lower schools existed should fit their pupils 
to meet these requirements, and thus gave an indirect 
but powerful impulse towards something higher even 
to these pupils who had no intention to enter the 
university^ 

We have seen also in the case of Guibert de 
Nogent how great difficulty was experienced in the 
age immediately preceding the rise of universities in 
finding teachers fitted for even the humblest kind of 
teaching. By supplying this want the universities 
doubtless gave a very considerable impulse to the estab- 



156 THE MEDIEVAL Ul^IVEESITIES 

lishment of schools, and thus to the spread of educa- 
tion; whilst the rapid multiplication of universities 
already mentioned testifies eloquently to the spread of 
intelligence, and to the growth of desires which could 
be satisfied only by a considerable increase in the num- 
ber of local schools. The high estimate that was 
placed on the licencia docendi conferred by the univers- 
ity, probably the sole degree for two centuries, shows 
clearly the direction in which university instruction 
was tending; and though, as we shall presently see, 
elementary schools seem to have been somewhat tardy 
in their growth, there was doubtless a vast increase in 
family education through private tutorships. 

(cZ) The last of the indirect benefits conferred by 
the universities was certainly wholly unintentional, 
since while emphasizing authority and servilely defer- 
ring to it, they yet, by their dialectic disputations, 
trained men to doubt everything, authority included, 
and thus paved the way unwittingly for that spirit of 
free inquiry which has done so much in the past few 
centuries for every department of knowledge. 

To this may be added that it is by no means unlikely 
that the organized self-government which characterized 
the ancient universities, whether in its more democratic 
form as in Bologna, where the student associations 
were the source of authority, or in the more aristo- 
cratic form which it assumed in Paris under the sway 
of the regent masters, cooperated with the example of 
the guilds in generating in men's minds, slowly but 
surely, more democratic ideas and truer conceptions of 
the rightful source of governmental authority. 

This brief account of the services of the mediaeval 



IKVENTION^ OF PRINTIISTG 157 

universities could not be more truthfully concluded 
than by quoting a sentence from Denifle.* " The 
Middle Ages need, in truth, no excuse for not having 
accomplished everything, since perfection even to-day 
after six or seven centuries has not been reached. 
Just at the present time we are involved in manifold 
doubt as to the best way to set about reforming our 
higher institutions of learning; although we should 
soon reach greater certainty by the adoption of a prin- 
ciple which the Middle Ages instinctively applied, but 
which in later times has alas ! been too often neglected, 
viz., that the new should rest upon the old, and that 
the old should remain living in the new." 

(5) Our final topic in treating of the mediaeval uni- 
versities relates to the changes wrought in them by 
the invention of printing, the introduction and cheap- 
ening of linen paper, and the revival of interest in 
classical literature. These facts which, occurring in 
the 15th century, brought to an end the mediaeval 
period, revolutionized the subject-matter and methods 
of the universities, though not without a vigorous 
struggle, and deeply affected their very organization. 

It would be difficult for us fully to conceive how 
profound was the change produced by the invention 
of printing and by the introduction of linen paper 
into common use which took place at nearly the same 
time.f Heretofore, not only had transcription been 

* Die Univ. des Mittelalters, p. 798. 

t Hallam's Middle Ages, C. IX, Pt. 2d., and Hattenbaoh, Das Schriftwesen 
des Mittelalters, p. 114-123, both indicate that though paper was known from 
Arabian sources as early as the 12th century, it was little used till the 15th. 
See Quentin Durward, C. X. Ill for vivid statement of effect of printing. 



158 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 

slow and costly, but the material on which to write 
was also costly, both causes preventing a rapid multi- 
plication of books. Henceforth all this was changed, 
in many ways. 

Most obviously, it made no longer indispensable the 
tedious work of dictation and copying with subsequent 
memorizing. As the professors might no longer dic- 
tate from works that would be in every hand, they were 
remitted to the necessity, if they read at all, of doing 
some work which bore the stamp of their own person- 
ality, and of submitting it to the test of a ready com- 
parison with the works of honored authors. Thus 
professors were stimulated to work as they had never 
been before. They dictated indeed, and in some cases 
have continued to do so down to the present century, 
but it has been from work which they have done them- 
selves. 

However, the old subtle hair-splitting habits long 
remained and led to what has been called ** the aca- 
demic art of spinning ". As an example of this we 
are told of a professor in Vienna that " he lectured 
twenty-two years on the first chapter of Isaiah, and 
was surprised by death before he was done." 

On the part of students, the release from copying 
and to some extent from memorizing, both gave more 
opportunity for the use of the higher powers of the 
intellect, and greatly lessened the time needed for ac- 
quiring knowledge. 

We have already seen how long was the time and how 
meagre the knowledge under the old regime. Fur- 
thermore, access to books made it no longer necessary 
for students to undertake long journeys, that they 



IKYEKTIOK OF PEIKTIKG 159 

might hear the words of famous masters from their 
own lips. Through the medium of print they might 
enjoy the wisdom of such masters at home and he 
spared the vexations and expense of travel. This fact 
doubtless had a tendency to diminish somewhat the 
numbers that flocked to special universities, or at least 
to make their clientage more largely local. 

A further consequence was, that under the new or- 
der of things introduced by printing fewer professors 
were required than before. This had a double effect; 
for the students it meant diminished fees; for the uni- 
versities, a more select teaching force by the retention 
of only the more highly gifted and learned masters 
whilst the less efficient were dispensed with. That 
the multiplication of masters who were often of very 
inferior character, and the consequent increased ex- 
pense of students, had grown to be great evils in the 
mediaeval universities, and that these evils were slow 
in yielding to the new order of things, may be clearly 
seen in the " Advertissemens au Roy " of the famous 
Eamus in 1562 with regard to the university of Paris.* 

Such were the more obvious effects produced on the 
universities by the invention of printing in the 15th 
century. It may readily be seen that they were im- 
portant in a high degree, affecting their methods of 
teaching and their efficiency, the expenses of instruc- 
tion and its breadth of influence. 

The revival of interest in classical literature and its 
growing use in instruction wrought changes in all 
classes of schools quite as weighty as those that have 

* Waddington, Vie de Ramus, pp. 141 and 409. 



160 THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 

just been mentioned, — changes in the subject-matter 
of arts studies in all schools, universities included; 
still further changes in method by the abolition or the 
lessening of scholastic disputation; changes also in 
parts of the organization of many universities, espec- 
ially those in Germany. 

With the general subject of the struggle of classic- 
ism for supremacy in education and its final triumph, 
we have nothing to do just now ; since for the sake of 
clearness and orderliness of view as to the sequence of 
events it is essential that we should limit ourselves 
strictly to that which belongs to the period antecedent 
to 1500 A. D. But the revival of interest in Greek 
and Roman literature which began in Italy in the time 
of Petrarch took on great proportions during the 15th 
century; what it was likely to" do for the universities 
began now to be seen, and it is fitting here to state 
briefly its obvious tendencies. 

It would obviously arouse a virulent but futile oppo- 
sition. It would revolutionize the arts studies by 
driving out scholasticism as empty and outworn, and 
by the introduction of the literature of classical an- 
tiquity in place of the barbarous Latin and monkish 
homilies of the Middle Ages. It would complete the 
revolution in method, by installing real observation 
and reasoning based thereon in the place of hair-split- 
ting definitions and distinctions, and by substituting 
for barren disputation with its mechanical readiness 
in the use of words and empty abstractions, a truly 
developing exposition of the best products of human 
genius. By the disuse of disputation with its need of 
incessant practice it would make no longer necessary 



CLASSICISM 161 

for this purpose the associated life of colleges and 
burses, thus slowly effecting changes in the organiza- 
tion of universities in which these were unendowed. 
The fulness of these momentous changes belongs to 
a later period, but its beginnings may now be seen, 
and hence have been mentioned in concluding our 
review of the early universities. 



CHAPTER VII 

CLOSE OF MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIOl^ 

The schools other than the universities during the 
four centuries that we have under review will need 
no very extended description. Indeed Compayre says 
in his History of Pedagogy that, " save claustral and 
cathedral schools, to which must be added some parish 
schools, the earliest examples of our village schools, 
the sole educational establishment of the Middle Ages 
was what is called the university." 

This statement, which may be correct as regards 
France, though even there the parish schools were so 
numerous that in 1380 there were 63 teachers of this 
class in Paris alone, is somewhat too sweeping when 
applied to Germany, the Low Countries, and England. 

Equally too favorable a view is conveyed by a state- 
ment attributed to Roger Bacon, " that there had 
never been so great an appearance of learning and so 
general an application to study in so many different 
faculties as in this time (the 13th century), when 
schools were erected in every city, town, burgh, and 
castle." 

There can indeed be little doubt that in England, 
during the last centuries of the Middle Ages, larger 
provisions were made for the education of the wealth- 
ier classes than elsewhere, not only in the monastic 
and cathedral schools, but also by private schools and 

(162) 



LOWER SCHOOLS 163 

tutors, by city schools, and the endowed grammar 
schools, of which at least thirty antedate 1500, includ- 
ing such still famous schools as Eton and Winchester; 
yet all this would hardly warrant such breadth of 
statement as is attributed to Bacon. 

In Germany and Switzerland the old monastic schools 
seem to have fallen largely into decay. The Benedict- 
ine cloisters had so greatly declined that, even in St. 
Gall, which had earlier been famous as a seat of learn- 
ing, but a single monk could be found in 1291 who 
could read and write.* 

The cathedral schools also declined for a time, but 
in the 13th century there was in them a marked revi- 
val of interest, old schools were improved, and many 
new ones were founded under church auspices in the 
more important cities, devoted however almost solely to 
the education of the clergy and of such sons of nobles 
as rose above the contempt of learning that prevailed 
in this class ; such scanty instruction as was vouchsafed 
in them to poor children was confined to the church 
catechism. 

As has earlier been said, city organizations sprang 
up later in Germany than in Italy and France; but 
when they did arise, the growing industries of the 
cities soon made apparent to the more opulent class 
the need of a culture suited to their wants, a practi- 
cal education adapted to fit men for their worldly 
duties as artisans and citizens. 

Hence during the 13th and 14th centuries, many 
schools were founded by the magistracy of nearly all 
cities, in which were taught reading, writing, reckon- 

* Dittes, Sohule der Padagogik, Pt. 4, § 20. 



164 CLOSE OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION 

ing, and some elements of Latin. Such schools were 
sometimes called " writing schools ". The clergy 
naturally claimed jurisdiction over these schools, and 
seem always to have maintained their rights of super- 
vision; but in not a few instances the quarrels between 
clergy and magistrates which grew out of this claim 
were detrimental to the schools. Any instruction 
beyond the merest elements was still confined to the 
church ; and in this, increasing numbers of sons of the 
wealthier citizens shared, impelled by the ambition to 
vie with the nobility.* 

Outside of the cities, little seems to have been done 
even for the elementary religious instruction of the 
poorer classes during these centuries, so that the ex- 
amination into the conditon of the rural regions made 
by Melanchthon and Luther early in the 16th century, 
reveals a deplorable ignorance which Luther depicts 
in his vigorous way. 

In the Low Countries, the chapter schools which 
were converted later into municipal schools, and in 
which instruction in grammar, music, and morals was 
carried far enough to admit to the universities, to- 
gether with some elementary schools, did valuable ser- 
vice in dispelling ignorance. 

The most noteworthy service to general education 
in northern Europe, however, grew out of the efforts 
of Gerhard Groot (+1384) of Deventer in Holland. 
Born in easy circumstances, and highly educated in 
the lore of the times, he gained his master's degree at 
an early age and devoted himself for some years to an 

* Specht, Gesohichte des Unterrichtswesens in Deutsohland bis 1250, pp. 
246-254. 




ERASMUS, 1467-1536 
See pages 168; 172 




MELANCHTHON, 1497-1560 
See page 164 




STURM, 1507-1589 
See [page3;i68 




LUTHER, 1483-1546 
See page 164 




THOMAS PLATTER, 1499-1582 
See page 171 




(165) 



ASCHAM. 1516?-1568 
See page 171 



THE HIEKONYMIANS 167 

easy yet studious life. Possibly from the nature of 
his studies, he conceived a disgust for the emptiness 
of his life, became an ascetic, and preached with great 
effect in the vernacular until he was silenced by the 
hostility of the monks. Then he founded a peculiar 
society, the *' Brotherhood of the Common Life ", 
called also Hieronymians. The members of this 
society had all things in common and were bound by 
no irrevocable vows. They supported themselves by 
the labor of their own hands, mostly through the mul- 
tiplication of books by transcription until the intro- 
duction of printing superseded this form of industry. 
They had an especial regard for religious culture, to 
further which they translated the Bible and the service 
books into the mother tongue that they might be 
brought to the understanding of the people. They 
were distinguished likewise for their dislike of scho- 
lastic subtleties.* 

The order grew and its houses multiplied rapidly in 
the countries of northern Europe. The brothers 
devoted themselves with especial zeal to the instruc- 
tion of the young. Schools were connected with all 
their houses, besides which they founded schools or 
taught in those already established. While laying 
special emphasis on religious teaching, they did not 
neglect literary culture, and when the new classical 
learning became known they were its effective advo- 
cates and its best teachers. Florentius Radewin 
(-1-14:00) succeeded Groot, and Gerard of Zutphen aided 
Florentius working for translating the Scriptures to 

* Von Raumer, Gesch. der Pad, L. p. 54-60 and Schmidt, Gesch. der Pad. 
II, p. 329. Barnard's Journal of Education, iv. 652. 



168 CLOSE OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATIOl^ 

vernacular. Poor boys and girls were often objects 
of their special care and nurture. During the two 
centuries of their activity, they undoubtedly did much 
for the spread of learning in northern Europe. The 
most celebrated of those once their pupils were Thomas 
a Kempis, Eudolph Agricola, Erasmus and Sturm, 
the last three of whom became eflQcient promoters of 
the cause of classical learning, whilst the first is known 
to entire Christendom by his *' Imitation of Christ ".* 

I have thus endeavored to give a concise sketch of 
the condition of European education, aside from the 
universities, during the closing centuries of the Mid- 
dle Ages. It is obvious that, while not reaching very 
deep in point of generality, it yet extends somewhat 
widely and has in it a promise of better things to 
come. It is likewise obvious that it does not justify 
any sweeping assertions, either as to its lack or as to 
its universal diSusion. 

Little need be added regarding the method that pre- 
vailed in these schools. Whatever of change is to be 
found from the methods of earlier ages, is in the di- 
rection of scholasticism, save among the brethren of 
Deventer. The principles if not the practices of 
scholasticism, and its paramount emphasis of au- 
thority, are to be seen everywhere. Dictation, which 
in the most favorable cases assumes somewhat the 
form of oral instruction, must necessarily prevail 
where books are few ; pupils must copy from dictation ; 
and, since they are to be expected to reproduce what 

*A good account of this order may be found in Barnard's American 
Journal of Education, Vol. IV, p. 622, translated from von Raumer, Ges- 
chichte der Padagogik, Vol. 1, pp. 51, etc. 



SCHOOL ACCOMODATIOiTS AND MASTERS 169 

has been given them, they are but too likely to mem- 
orize without any too anxious efforts to understand. 
Improvements in what seem to us tedious, ineffective, 
and time-wasting methods, must await the advent of 
books and the coming of that happier age when reform 
should be the order of the day, as in other things, so 
also in the subjects, the methods, and the spirit of the 
schools. 

Aside from the universities, it is probable that few 
or no buildings dedicated solely to school purposes, 
were erected in Europe, until near the close of the 
Middle Ages. From the intimate connection of the 
schools with the church, they were naturally held in 
buildings devoted chiefly to religious uses, and which 
had little or no reference to the conveniences or com- 
fort of school children. Possibly this remark may not 
apply to all of the English endowed grammar schools 
which originated in the 14th and 15th centuries, nor 
to some of the German city schools ; yet the accounts 
that have been preserved of the equipment even of the 
universities, which the elementary schools could hardly 
be expected to excel, show how little regard was paid 
to comfort. School accommodations indeed smacked 
strongly of the asceticism in the midst of which Chris- 
tian education had originated. 

As were the school accommodations so were the 
school-masters of this period. With some honorable 
exceptions in the case of a few devoted parish priests, 
and among the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the 
Brethren of De venter, the ranks of elementary teach- 
ers were largely recruited, as they have too often been 
in later days, from the failures in other callings. 



170 CLOSE OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATIOI^ 

Many of them were engaged only for brief periods, 
were miserably but probably adequately paid for their 
inefficient services, and wandered from place to place 
seeking employment, a poor, despised, and too often 
immoral class. 

Most prominent among these vagabond school -mas- 
ters was a somewhat numerous class of wanderers 
called Vagants or Bacchants. This class had its origin 
in the privilege of safe conduct granted to the univer- 
sities for their travelling students. This privilege, 
which was peculiarly liable to abuse by the idle and 
vicious, seems very early to have bred a set of tramps 
amongst men of some little university education but 
of depraved tastes, who used the name of travelling 
students to derive alms from the charitable, and more 
especially from the parish priests, whom they occasion- 
ally aided in teaching the children of the parish and 
in other duties. Claiming the privileges of clergy 
their lewd Latin songs and their discreditable con- 
duct soon disgusted even the coarse age in which they 
lived. As early as the 13th century they had become 
so intolerable a nuisance that some bishops and abbots 
caused them to be met with cudgels instead of alms; 
and about the end of this century the church author- 
ities forbade the parish clergy to aid the Goliards, as 
they were called at first, in any way, and denounced 
weighty penalties in case of disobedience.* 

But though checked for a time by such vigorous 
measures, these vagabond scholars were by no means 
suppressed. They reappeared in the following cen- 
turies, known now as Vagants from their roving mode 

*Speclit, Gesch. des TJnterrichtswesens, etc., pp. 198-201. 



BACCHANTS 171 

of life, and even more frequently as Bacchants because 
of the vicious conviviality of their habits. They are 
not by any means exclusively wandering teachers seek- 
ing casual jobs at teaching and living off the country 
meanwhile, but lusty young fellows of coarsely rois- 
tering manners, who occasionally do some teaching 
between times, while visiting the schools of cities that 
offer abundant though coarse means of living to stu- 
dents. 

They are attended by a number of wretched lads 
calley '* A. B. C. shooters ", whose studies they nom- 
inally direct, but who are really their fags begging and 
even stealing for their brutal masters, and learning 
so little that one of them, Thomas Platter, who after- 
wards gained distinction, tells us that after nine years 
as an A. B. C. shooter, when he came into a school 
at Zurich, *' 1 knew nothing, nor could I even read 
Donatus, and yet I was eighteen years of age ; and I 
sat there like a hen among chickens."* If the ped- 
agogical efforts of the Bacchants when they were 
engaged as teachers were of the same character as their 
dealings with their fags. Platter's account gives us a 
lively picture of the character and success of the most 
numerous class of elementary teachers. After the 
end of the loth century, nothing of this discreditable 
class survives but their name, which continued to be 
given to the new-comers in the German universities. 

Whilst England does not seem to have been infested 
with these vagrant teachers, it is evident from a com- 

* Von Raumer, Op. Cit. Vol. 1, p. 335, which is translated in Barnard's 
American Journal, Vol, 5, pp. 79-90; and ibid p. 603 is another account of 
the Bacchants. 



172 CLOSE or MEDIEVAL EDUCAFIOK 

plaint made by Roger Ascham in the 16th century that 
no greater care was there exercised in the choice of 
teachers. "It is pity," he says, " that commonly 
more care is had, yea and that amongst very wise men, 
to find out a cunning man for their horse, than a cun- 
ning man for their children. They say nay in word 
but they do so in deed. For the one they will gladly 
give a stipend of two hundred crowns by the year, 
and loth to offer to the other two hundred shillings. 
God that sitteth in heaven laugheth their choice to 
scorn, and rewardeth their liberality as it should; for 
he suffereth them to have tame and well-ordered horses, 
but wild and unfortunate children."* 

As would naturally be expected, the discipline in 
the schools was everywhere severe and barbarous. The 
brutal treatment of the fags by the Bacchants is de- 
picted by Platter. Erasmus inveighs bitterly against 
the barbarity current in the schools of his day as de- 
feating its object by creating a dislike for study, and 
he gives an example of it in his own case. More than 
a generation later Ascham testifies to the same efiect 
that before he was fourteen years old " a fond school- 
master drave him so with fear of beating from all love 
of learning " that he felt its effects even in his mature 
years. Compayre says: " the whip was in fashion in 
the 15th as in the 14th century. There was no other 
difference, says a historian, save that the whips of the 
15th century were twice as long as in the 14th." 
What better could be looked for in the lower schools 
when the University of Paris still resorted to the rod 
«ven with its bachelors. The English practice in the 

* The Schoolmaster, Arber's edition, p. 83. 



COEPOBAL PUNISHMEKT 173 

treatment of pupils, and the punishments commonly 
resorted to, are quaintly illustrated in the following 
old English rhyme : 

'* For all their noble bloode. 

He plucks them by the hood 

And shakes them by the eare. 

And bryngs them in such f eare : 

He bayteth them lyke a beare. 

Like an ox or a bul. 

Their wittes he sayth are dul : 

He sayth they have no brayne 

Their estate to maintain: 

And make to bowe the knee 

Before his Majestic."* 
Such then were the schools and school-masters of 
the last four centuries of the Middle Ages; such were 
the narrow limits of their influence ; such their studies 
their methods, and their discipline. It is not difficult 
however to see that there has been a perceptible ad- 
vance over the two preceding centuries, at least in the 
numbers of those who receive some kind of schooling 
and in the facility of finding some kind of teachers. 
The instruction is no longer so largely confined to 
mere dogma; in the schools of the cities the studies 
are made to bear upon a better preparation for active 
life; the parish schools have evidently become more 
numerous, evincing greater earnestness in the religious 
training of the young; and I am inclined to think 
that, bad as a large part of the teachers may have been 
they were no worse morally than in the 10th and 11th 

* Education in Early England, p. 7, in publications of the early Eng- 
lish Text Soe.' 



174 CLOSE OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION" 

centuries, and were considerably more learned as well 
as numerous. 

Nor in this connection should be overlooked the 
humble yet devoted and meritorious services of many 
men of the new religious orders, and of some teachers 
of this period who were of a high type; like Guarino 
(+ 1460) and Vittorino da Feltre (+1446), both of 
whom were famous as teachers and became tutors of 
princes; both of whom distinguished themselves by 
zeal for better literature in instruction, and by their 
rejection of the prevailing scholastic methods as tend- 
ing '' to make boys twice as ignorant and silly " as 
they had been before; whilst Guarino also inspired by 
his teaching at least five English scholars who later 
rose to distinction.* 

Likewise the '* gentle Gerson " ought not to be for- 
gotten as a promoter of the education of the masses, 
who, rising from a humble station to be chancellor of 
the University of Paris, distinguished himself in his 
high station by " his sympathy for the disinherited 
ones of this world ", and by writing small elementary 
treatises for the common people in their mother 
tongue, t 

If now we add to this the work of the universities, 
about fifty in number, that were established during 
these four centuries, and consider the great numbers 
of men that they reached and the wide extent of their 
influence, it will easily be seen how vast has been the 
educational progress made in this period. 

It is well for us thus to take considerate account of 

*Lyte, History of Oxford University. C. XIV, p. 393. 
tCompayre, p. 76. 



THE REIJAISSAKCE 175 

the state of education at this time, for with the close 
of the 15th century we reach the end of the old order 
of things, and approach the era of that tremendous 
intellectual as well as religious revolution called the 
Great "Renaissance, whose inciting causes we have al- 
ready observed in the invention of printing, render- 
ing intellectual intercourse easier, and in the revival 
of interest in classical literature; to which may be 
added a profound religious unrest, and an intellectual 
expectancy springing from great geographical dis- 
coveries. 

Nor were the conditions lacking which would favor 
a swift advance in education as well as civilization. 
For, during the period that was ending, the political 
administration of most of the European states had 
assumed a more settled form with the decline of feud- 
alism and the consequent strengthening of the powers 
of the central governments, thus assuring that measure 
of order and legal security so essential to the progress 
of learning ; to Which was added the need that began 
to be felt in the diplomatic intercourse of states of a 
kind of knowledge hitherto neglected, which urgently 
prompted men to new forms of culture and became a 
powerful influence for enlightenment.* 

Thus with these powerful incitements to a new and 
better learning and under such more favorable condi- 
tions for its cultivation the Middle Ages ended and 
the new era was ushered in. 

* Guizot, History of Civilization in Europe, Lecture XI. 



INDEX 

A star^ shows that portrait or illustration is given ; 
q. indicates quotation. 

xi B C shooters 171 

Abdarrahman 28 

Abelard, Peter 81* 88, 120 

academic art of spinning 158 

adventure, love of 108 

Advertissemens au Eoy 159 

Albert 60 

Agricola, Rudolph 168 

Aix-la-chapelle , 74 

Alcuin 63, 74-86 

Alexandria 36, 45, 47, 57 

algebra 27 

Alfred the Great 61, 62, 69*, 88, 89-90, 106, 119 

Ambrose, St 52, 57, 75*, 95 

Anna Comnena 34 

anti-monastic feeling 116 

antiquity of universities 132 

Anwykyll, q 49 

Apostolic Constitutions 47 

Aquinas, St. Thomas 75* 

Summa of 136 

Arabic education 39 

literature 29 

figures 95 

(177) 



178 HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATIOK 

Arabic poetry 2& 

Arabs 28 

architecture 95 

Arezzo 29 

Aristotle 26, 35, 36, 69*, 87, 136, 142 

arithmetic 54, 57, 60, 68, 105, 163 

art 109 

arts 26, 118, 135 

ascetic spirit 100 

Ascham, Roger 165*, 172 

Asser 89 

astrology 27 

astronomy 26, 27, 33, 46, 60, 85 

Athens 40 

schools of , 120 

Augustine, St 48, 75* 

Avicenna 139 

Bacchants 170, 171, 172 

Bacon, Eoger 81*, 133, 139" 

q 162, 163 

Bseda (see Bede) 54 

Bagdad 28 

Bangulf, letter to 63-67 

Bardos 33 

Barnard's American Journal of Education 113, 

150, 168, 171 

Basil, St 52 

Bede Venerable 54, 59, 61, 81* 

History 90 

Benedict, St 56 

Benedictine monasteries 57, 91, 163 

■ monks 149 



INDEX 179 

Berlin 133 

Bernard, St 75* 

Bible 21, 46, 47, 48, 59, 60, 64, 136, 139, 167 

interpretation of 46 

translation 55 

Boethius 54, 140 

Consolations 90 

Bokhara 28 

Bologna 106, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124, 

125, 126, 129, 130, 132, 152, 156 

books ' 158 

Bursche 152 

burses 151 

Byzantines 24, 33-38 

architecture 109 

art 109 

barrenness of 34 

— — education 40 

learning 33 



Cabus, Book of 30 

Cambridge 106, 119, 121, 140, 146 

carving 95 

Cassell's England, q ' 101 

castle schools 99, 100 

Catechetic school 45, 57, 83 

Catechumenate , 45 

cathedral schools 56, 57, 58, 86, 119, 162 

Catholic church 23, 58, 111 

Chaldean lore 52 

chapter schools 164 

Charlemagne.... 20, 28, 55, 58, 59, 62, 65*, 88, 

89, 99, 106, 119, 127 



180 HISTOEY OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION 

Charlemagne, helpers 73-90 

himself a student 68 

zeal for learning 71 

Charles the Bald 73, 87 

chemistry 27 

chess 100 

children. 43 

Christ, teaching of 19, 41 

Christian education 39-90 

ideal 103,104 

schools 124 

Christianity 36 

growth of 19, 20 

truest expression of 41 

Christians 18, 21 

chivalric education 103 

chivalry 95-104, 107 

Chrodegang, of Metz 58 

Chrysostom 47, 48 

church, power of 154 

Cicero 140 

cipher 95 

city schools 163 

civic knowledge 107 

civil law 118 

civilization 98 

classic authors 57 

literature 159 

classicism 160 

Clemens of Alexandria 46 

Clement 85 

clergy 63, 67, 106 



IKDEX 181 

clerical control 17, 124, 125, 132 

cloister 47, 163 

Colet, John 81* 

college servants 122 

collisions with local authority 130 

Cologne 133 

commencement 149 

companionship of nations 109 

Compayr^, q 113, 162, 172, 174 

compulsory education 71 

Constantino 115 

of Carthage 27 

Constantinople, culture 34 

Royal College 33 

constitution of universities 117 

copying 21, 34, 78 

Cordova 28 

corporal punishment 30, 93, 94, 152 

courtesy. 98, 107 

crusades 103, 108-110, 154 

Cubberley, q 15, 49, 91, 127, 138 

culture 22, 26, 44, 51, 58, 110, 145 

Arabic 29 

literary 99 

non-professional 118 

studies 135 

currents of educational activity 23, 25*, 39 

customs of the towns 107 

Cyprian 48 

Damascus 28 

Daniel 52 

Danish invasions 90 



182 HISTOET OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION" 

Dante , ..29 

Dark ages 18, 23 

darkest ages 88 

decimal notation 27 

degrees 131, 134 

cost of 149 

democracy 108 

democratic education 71 

Demosthenes 36 

Denifle, q...ll3, 119, 126, 129, 130, 132, 135, 136, 157 

development of individuality 103 

Deutsch, q 29 

Deventer, brethren of 164, 168, 169 

dialectics 41, 46, 88, 135, 136, 144 

dictation 141, 142, 158, 168 

Diophantus 27 

direction 118 

discipline of the mediaeval universities 134 

disorders and riots 125 

disputations 139, 140, 143, 160 

Dittes, q 163 

dogma ; 97 

Dolensis, Alex 55 

domestic training 43, 45, 59 

Dominicans 169 

Don Quixote 97 

D uns tan 90 

ecclesiastical authority 118, 119, 123, 130 

Education in Early England, q 144, 173 

educational history 55 

Eginhard 68, 74 

q 20 



INDEX 183 

elementary schools 164 

embroidery 59 

encyclopsedia 54, 55 

England 59, 60, 62, 105, 162 

episcopal schools .57, 58, 93, 124 

Erasmus 165*, 168, 172 

Erfurt 93, U3 

ethics 46, 136 

Eton 163 

Euclid 27, 69* 

European type 154 

externs 56 

extravagance 98 

faculties 118, 131 

feudal system 22, 154, 175 

Eirst Eenaissance 86, 89 

revival of learning 93 

Eontenelle 80 

France 104, 163 

Francis of Assisi, St 75* 

Franci scans 169 

freedom of study 123, 134 

of teaching 123 

of travel 153, 154 

French universities 129 

vernacular 73 

Freundgen 72 

Fulda 55, 72, 80, 87 

Galen 27, 69*, 114, 139 

Gall, St 72, 163 

Gaul 17, 18, 29 

geography 105, 153 



184 HISTOEY OF MEDI^YAL EDUCATION 

geometry , 33, 46, 54 

Gerard of Zutphen 167 

Gerbert 29, 95, 110, 111 

German grammar 72 

songs 72 

universities 133, 151, 160 

vernacular 72, 73 

Germanic independence 103, 104 

Germany 104, 105, 162, 163 

Gersen 174 

Gibbon 35, 110, 114 

q 28 

God 31, 41 

Goliards 170 

good faith 98 

grammar 33, 46, 56, 60, 78, 80, 94, 135 

schools 163, 169 

Great Eenaissance 145, 175 

Grecian intellect 37 

Greek culture \ 40, 45 

language 80, 85 

learning ...33, 40 

literature 27, 28, 33, 34, 40, 52, 57, 59, 160 

science 26,34 

Green, q 55, 61 

Gregory the Great 59 

Grimbald 89 

Groot, Gerhard 164 

Guarino 174 

Guibert de Nogeut 94, 100, 155 

guilds of trades 107, 108, 117, 126 



IN^DEX 185 

Guizot, q 18, 44, 

51, 55, 60, 63, 77, 80, 83, 84, 94, 97, 104, 175 

gunpowder 27 

hair-splitting 158, 160 

Hallam, q 35, 59, 88, 89, 90, 93, 105, 106, 116, 157 

Haroun al Easchid 28 

heathen literature 48, 51 

schools 46, 48 

heathenism 48 

Hebrews 28, 39, 41 

Heidelberg 106, 133 

helpless, regard for 98 

hermits 43 

hierarchy 20 

Hieronymians 167 

Hincmar, Bishop 88 

Hippocrates 27, 69^ 114, 139 

Histoire Generale, q 27, 29 

history 153 

Homer 36, 52, 99 

Huber, q 113 

humanitarian ideal 42, 44, 103 

Ibn Tophail 30-32 

ideal, humanitarian 42, 44, 103 

of Christian education 40 

ideals 36 

ignorance, causes of 21 

general 89, 93 

inception 149 

independent honor 103 

thought 142 

individual, development of 44 



186 HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION 

individuality. 40, 42 

development of 103 

industries 105, 107 

influence of universities : .....153 

initiation into knighthood 101* 

in practica 140 

inspection. .71 

intellectual activity 106 

awakening 110 

interior of Norman school 147* 

interns 56 

invention of printing 157 

Ireland 59, 60, 61, 74, 87 

Irnerius 120 

Isidore of Seville., 54, 55, 57 

isolation 22, 109, 154 

Italian schools 115 

Italy 17, 29, 142, 160, 163 

Jarrow school 54, 60 

Jerome, St 48, 75* 

jurisprudence 60, 114, 115, 135 

justice 98 

Justinian 40, 139 

knights 103 

Koran 26 

labor 56 

Lacroix, q 127 

Latin 52, 59, 68, 93, 105, 136, 164 

barbarous 93 

degenerate 59 

literature 57, 59 

schools 105 



IKDEX 187 

Latin vs. vernacular 22 

......58, 72, 90, 97, 105, 111, 112, 122, 136, 160 

Laurie, q...56, 57, 93, 107, 108, 113, 114-118, 120, 132 

law. ..: .....59, 115, 117, 138*, 139 

Bologna 118 

Montpellier 118 

Oxford 117, 118, 140 

Paris 119 

lawlessness 103 

learning by teaching 146 

lecture on civil law 138* 

Leidrade 73 

Leipsic 106, 133 

Leo of Thessalonica 33 

Leonardo of Pisa 81* 

liberal arts 96, 117 

liberality 98 

liberty, religion, honor 96 

libraries 140 

Medici 141 

Paris 140 

licencia docendi 123, 131, 156 

linen paper 157 

literary culture 96 

taste 107 

literature 21, 30, 48, 59, 135 

heathen 48, 51 

logic 26, 144 

London 105, 144, 155 

Louis the Debonnaire 86 

Low countries 162, 164 

loyalty 98 



188 HISTOET OP MEDIEVAL EDUCATIOi^ 

Lucan 140 

Luther 164, 165* 

Lyte, q 113, 119, 121, 130, 139, 149, 174 

Macaulay, q 23 

Magnus Aurelius Oassiodorus 54 

man, end of 51 

manuscripts 21,34, 56, 78 

illumination of 95 

marriage 41 

Martianus Capella 53, 54, 85 

Martin de Tours, St 78, 80, 84, 85 

mathematics 27 

mediaeval system summarized 14* 

school..... 49* 

Medici library 141 

medicine 26, 27, 114, 115, 117, 118, 135, 139 

Grecian sources 114 

Montpellier 118 

Sal ernum 118 

Meianchthon 164, 165* 

memorizing 158 

Menander 34 

metaphysics 35 

methods at mediaeval universities 134 

of instruction... 141 

Middle Ages '. 18, 39, 56, 88, 114 

Minnesingers 99 

miracles .51 

monasteries 43, 47, 86, 90, 116 

Benedictine 57, 91, 163 

English 90 

monastic restrictions 124 



INDEX 189 

monastic schools 56, 127, 135, 162 

Mohammed-ibn-Mousa 27 

Mohammedans 26, 28, 39 

schools Ill 

monotheism 39 

Montpellier 118, 133, 140 

Moors 29 

morals 151 

at universities 150 

Moses 46, 52 

Moslems 28 

Mt. Athos 33 

Mullinger, q 47, 

59, 63, 68, 80, 88, 119, 120, 139, 146, 'l49 

municipal schools 164 

municipalities, growth of 104-108 

— — Roman 104 

music 54, 57, 58, 68, 95, 100 

church 52 

mythology 48 

national culture 123 

nationalism, spirit of 104 

nations 122, 124, 129 

natural history 60 

ninth century 62-90 

noster niagister 149 

oaths of chivalry 97 

optics 26 

Origen 46, 69*, 77 

origin of universities 119 

Orleans 93, 104 

outer monastic school 127* 



190 HISTORY OF MEDIAEVAL EDUCATIOlir 

Ovid 99, 140 

Oxford 90, 106, 119, 121, 133, 136, 146, 150, 151 

painting .' 95 

papyrus 21 

Palace school, "^9, 80 

Pantanus 45 

parchment 22 

Paris.. ..93, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124, 126, 

129, 133, 136, 150, 151, 152, 156, 162, 172, 174 

library 140 

students 150 

Paulsen, q 113 

penmanship 95 

Pepin 83 

Peter the Lombard 136 

Petrarch 29, 81^ 160 

phil osophers 120 

philosophy 26, 33, 46, 54, 109, 120, 136 

Cambridge 118 

Oxford 118 

Paris 120 

Photius 33 

physical education 100 

Plato 52, 87 

Platter, Thomas .....165* 171 

poetry ...46, 54, 60, 100, 109 

chivalric 99 

poverty of the universities 130 

Prague 106, 133 

preparatory schools 121 

printing 140 

privileges and immunities of the university... 122, 134 



iifbEX 191 

proselyting 39 

protection 118 

Ptolemy 27 

Quadrivium 15, 53,57, 58, 93, 135 

Rabanus Maurus 55, 57, 68, 72, 84, 87 

Bade win, Florentius 167 

Ramus c 159 

Rashdall, q Ill, 113, 135 

reading 57, 105, 163 

reason above force . 154 

use of 142 

refinement 98 

Reichenau 67, 68, 80 

religion 17, 31, 97 

religious controversies 88 

doctrines 82 

fanaticism 108 

teaching , 164 

revival of learning 62 

Rheims 93, 95 

rhetoric 46, 60, 80 

Roman civil law 115 

education 43 

literature 160 

Rome 17, 19, 36, 93 

Rousseau 30, 32 

Salamanca 29 

Salernum 27, 115, 118 

Saracenic culture 44, 109 

schools 110-112, 114 

Saracens 24-28, 29, 111 

sarcophagus of literature 37 



192 HISTOET OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATIOK 

Savigny, q 120, 123 

Schlegel, q 36 

Schmidt, q 26, 29, 

30, 47, 54, 56, 59, 67, 72, 100, 131, 132, 141 

scholastic education 100 

method 88, 144, 145 

renaissance > 106 

scholasticism 26, 105, 144, 160 

school buildings 169 

of mendicant monks 91* 

of the Palace 79, 80 

sciences 26, 29, 59, 135, 136 

Scott, Sir Walter, q 34, 157 

Scotus Erigena 61, 87, 120 

Scriptures. See Bible. 

self-government 118, 134, 156 

seeking 98 

Servatus, Lupus 87 

Seville 29 

skepticism 116, 156 

Socrates 36, 80, 81* 84 

Solomon 30 

sophists 120, 144 

Sophocles -.■ 36 

Spain 17, 26, 28, 110, 114 

Specht, q 56, 59, 164, 170 

specialization 114, 117 

of studies, charters 119 

spelling 78 

spirit of honor 97 

state, education for 42 

steadfastness 98 



INDEX 193 

Strabo, Walafried 67, 68 

students at universities 121 

immaturity 121 

number of 159 

studies at mediseval universities 134 

studium generale ....131, 132 

Sturm 165* 168 

summaries 141 

superstitions 44 

Sylvester II, Pope 95 

Tacitus 104 

tenth century 29 

relapse 93 

TertuUian 47, 48 

text-books 53 

Alcuin 80 

Theodulf 68, 73 

theological controversies. 35 

students 151 

theology 26, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 135, 136 

Paris 118 

Thomas a Kempis 168 

Toledo ..29 

town schools 105 

trade schools 105 

traditionary lore 114, 115 

travel 109, 111, 134 

Trivium and quadrivium 15, 53, 57, 58, 93, 135 

troubadours 99 

twelfth century revival 113 

renaissance 89, 107 



194 CLOSE OF MEDI^YAL EDUCAFIOK 

unity of the universe.. 31 

universities 45, 108 

ancient 123 

and lower schools 155 

causes of their rise 114-118 

conduct 125 

French 29 

German 122, 131, 133 



Italian 129 

mediaeval 113-161 

organization 129 

origin of 125 

privileges 125, 126 

utilitarian spirit 42, 43 

vernacular (see Latin, French, German).. ..89, 105, 174 

vagrants 170 

Vatican 141 

Vienna 106, 142, 150, 158 

Virgil 99 

Vittorineda Feltre. 174 

von Eaumer, q 113, 131, 

132, 139, 144, 150, 152, 167, 168, 171 

Waddington 159 

wastefulness 98 

weak defended 98 

Weissenborn, q 95 

William of Champeaux 88, 120 

Occam 145 

Winchester 1 63 

woman, sphere of 41, 43 

teacher of her children 43 



INDEX 195 

women as teachers 47 

education of 59 

respect for : 98 

writing 67, 105, 163 

schools 105, 164 

York school 60, 74 



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